About this Research Topic

Background

Nonverbal language is a rich source of indexical and symbolic information in speech communication and a demanding field for scientific, technological, and artistic investigation. There is no spoken communicative interaction in which pragmatic meanings are not conveyed either by voice quality, speech prosody or body gestures. Structuring prosodic information in its varied forms is the means the speaker uses to give a particular meaning to her/his saying. The study of prosody of speech produced by a human speaker or a machine in real-life situations for the purposes of informing, communicating, entertaining, impressing on the listener, and enabling dialogue in the context of human-human or human-machine interactions can help us gain a better understanding of how prosody shapes speech production and perception in diverse domains such as technology, art, and scientific investigation.

The main goal of this Research Topic is to shed light on how vocal and visual prosodic information varies across the most diverse situations of real life to express meaning. We welcome submissions on emotional prosody, vocal aesthetics, and the prosodic expression of different attitudes in real-life situations, including human-machine interaction and art and entertainment.

Particular themes may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• prosodic meaning in spontaneous situations
• indexical meaning in spoken communication
• prosody of speaking, declamation and singing styles
• voices and talking heads in TTS systems
• voices in oral poetry and synesthetic kinds of art
• voices in the entertainment industry, especially in animations
• voices in the cinema, theatre, TV, radio, and other media performances
• vocal and visual prosody in linguistic, paralinguistic, and extralinguistic features
• vocal stereotypes, sound symbolism, and voice aesthetics
• sonorities and their synesthetic perceptual effects
• sonorities and their effect on wellbeing, mental health, and related areas
• sonorities in sensory landscapes
• sonorities in animal communication
• sonorities and cross modalities.

Keywords: Prosody, prosodic meaning, speech technology, vocal aesthetics, speech research

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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