Vocalization
Mc Arthur ( 1992) defines that vocalization is the study of nonverbal cues of the voice that produces special sounds like groans, sigh, cry, laugh, yell, whistle, swallow, cough, etc (p. 1092). Moreover, he also states that voice itself as vocal sound means the typical sound of some speaking, the product of the vibration of the vocal cord, mouth, nose, tongue and such qualities as huskiness and throatiness (p. 1094).
According to Crystal ( 1991) in Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, vocalization is a general term used in linguistics and phonetics to refer to an utterance viewed solely as a sequence of sound. No reference is made to its linguistic structure, and indeed, in such phrases as “infant vocalization”. There may be no such structure. (p. 374). This term is sometimes used to refer to the use of sound involving vocal cord vibration. Then, it is called any voice sound.
Emotional Expression
Emotion is an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate or the like is experienced as distinguish from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness (Yerkes, 1989, p. 467). While, Mc Arthur (1992) defines expression as the act of process of using language or some other medium of communication. An inclusive term for a word, phrase, form of words, idiom, usage, etc (p. 394). Sometimes emotion needs expression especially when the speaker has sudden feeling. The speaker will express it spontaneuosly. Based on the above definition, we can conclude that emotional expression is a representation of one’s feeling into words, phrase, or sentences.
Function of Nonverbal Communication in the Communication Process
Knapp (1972) states that nonverbal communication cannot be studied in isolation from the total communication process. Verbal and nonverbal communication should be treated as a total and inseparable unit (p. 8-9). In social interaction, verbal behaviour needs supporting from nonverbal behaviour.
Moreover, Tubbs and Moss (1996) in the book “Human Communication” argues that basically nonverbal message functions as substituting, accenting, or contradicting its verbal message. Generally, when people are in the face of two inappropiate messages, they prefer to believe nonverbal message (p. 114).
Definition of Communication
According to Yerkes (1996), communication is giving sucessfully thought, feeling,ideas, or information to others through speech or writing, bodily or signal (p. 271). It means that communication here is as the way human communicates to others. They can share their feeling, thought, ideas or infromation to others by using their speech, body movement or writing.
Furthermore, in Kamus Komunikasi, Effendy (1989) also states:
Komunikasi berasal dari bahasa Latin “communicatio” yang berarti pergaulan, persatuan, peran serta, kerjasama, bersumber dari istilah komunis yang berarti sama makna merupakan sebuah proses penyampaian suatu pesan dalam bentuk lambang bermakna sebagai paduan pikiran dan perasaan berupa ide, informasi, kepercayaan, harapan, himbauan, dsb yang dilakukan seseorang kepada orang lain baik langsung secara tatap muka maupun tidak langsung melalui media dengan tujuan mengubah sikap, pandangan/perilaku (p. 245).
Comunication is derived from Latin “communicatio”, which means association, unity, participation, and cooperation,comes from “communis” term that means synonim as a process of conveying a message in form of meaningful sign as the combinaton of thought and feel in form of ideas, information, faith, hopes, suggestion and so on, which have been done by someone to others directly in face to face interaction or indirectly through a media in order to change the view/attitude. (translated by the writer).
Here, communication means a process of sending message ( feeling, idea, information and so on) from one to others directly or indirectly. It is clear that communication is a process of how human being sends message or information and communicates to other people.
Categories of Communication
Generally, many linguists classify communication into two categories, namely verbal and nonverbal communication. According to Effendy (1989)
Komunikasi nonverbal merupakan komunikasi yang dilancarkan seseorang tanpa menggunakan lambang bahasa sebagaimana lazimnya, melainkan dengan lambang kial, gambar, warna, dll. Misalnya isyarat dengan asap seperti yang dilakukan oleh orang-orang Indian, dan isyarat memukul beduk menandakan waktu shalat sudah tiba yang dilakukan oleh umat Islam didesa-desa dan tempat lain. Sementara itu, komunikasi verbal merupakan komunikasi yang dilakukan oleh seseorang dengan menggunakan bahasa simbol (tulisan) atau bahasa lisan (p. 247).
Nonverbal communication is the communication which is used by someone without using the common language symbol, but by using gesture, picture, color, etc. For instance, a sign of smoke for Indian in the forest, and striking a drum at the mosque to summon to prayer by moslem people in the village and other countries. While verbal communication is a communication which is used by someone by using language symbol (written) or spoken language.(translated by the writer).
Different from categories mentioned above, Tubbs and Moss (1980) argues that there are four types of communication (p. 112-113), they are:
1. Vocal verbal communication : system of communication through the words which are spoken, such as between a father and his son who are discussing about their planning to buy a new car.
2. Non vocal verbal communication : words which are used but not spoken. For example: written language that is used in the letter.
3. Vocal nonverbal communication: special sounds which are spoken. For example: gripes and vocalizations.
4. Nonvocal nonverbal communication: including attitute, perfomance, and gesture only.
Boundaries of Nonverbal Communication
According to Knapp (1972), nonverbal communication is related to words which are not spoken or written (p. 5). Then, he categorizes nonverbal communication into seven types, they are:
1. Body motion or kinesics behaviour
Body motion or kinesics behaviour typically includes gestures, movements of the body, limbs, hands, head, feet, and legs, facial expressions (smiles), eye behaviour (blinking, direction and length of gaze, and pupil dilation) and posture.
2. Physical Characteristics
Physical characteristics cover things, which remain relatively unchanged during the period of interaction. Physical characteristics themselves include such things as: physical type or body shape, general attractiveness, body or breath odour, height, weight, hair, and skin colour or tone.
3. Touching behaviour
Touching behaviour includes hitting, greetings and farewells, holding, guiding another’s movement, and other more specific instances.
4. Paralanguage
Paralanguage deals with how something is said and not what is said. It deals with the range of nonverbal vocal cues surrounding common speech behaviour. Paralanguage can be divided into two types, such as: voice qualities and vocalizations.
5. Proxemics
Proxemics is generally considered to be the study of man’s use and perception of his social and personal space. This study deals with seating arrangements, and spatial arrangements as related to leadership, communication flow, and the task at hand.
6. Artifacts
Artifacts include the manipulation of objects in contact with the inter-acting persons, which may act as nonverbal stimuli. Artifacts can include lipstick, eye-glasses, eyeliners and others.
7. Environmental factors
This factor includes the furniture, architecture style, interior decorating, lighting conditions, smells, colors, temperature, additional music, etc.
Paralanguage
Paralanguage refers to communication that goes beyond the specific spoken words. It is made of sounds that sometimes do not have a written form. It also reminds us that people convey their feelings not only in what they say, but also in how they say it. The way they can manipulate their voice in saying something includes like: pitch height, intensity, and extent or length. Knapp (1972) says that paralanguage deals with how something is said and not what is said. It deals with the range of nonverbal vocal cues surrounding common speech behavior (p. 7). Furthermore, Trager (1958), (in Knapp, 1972, 7) classifies paralanguage into the following components.
A. Voice Qualities
This voice quality includes such things as pitch range, pitch control, rhythm control, tempo, articulation control, resonance, glottis control, and vocal lip control.
B. Vocalizations
Mc Arthur ( 1992) defines vocalization as the study of nonverbal cues of the voice produces special sounds, like: groans, sigh, cry, laugh, yell, whistle, swallow, cough, etc (p. 1092). Moreover, he also states that voice itself as vocal sound that means the typical sound of some speaking, the product of the vibration of the vocal cords, mouth, nose, tongue and such qualities as huskiness and throatiness (p. 1094). Furthermore, Trager (1958) classifies vocalizations into three types, they are :
1). Vocal characterizers
This vocal characterizer includes such thing as laughing, crying, sighing, yawning, belching, swallowing, heavily marked inhaling or exhaling, coughing, clearing of the throat, hiccupping, moaning, groaning, whining, yelling, whispering, sneezing, snoring, stretching, etc.
2). Vocal qualifiers
According to Crystal ( 1991: 376) in dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, vocal qualifiers is a term used by some linguists as part of their analysis of the paralinguistic features of the voice. For example: the expression of various emotional states, such as: anger or sarcasm by means of vocal effect like harsh or tense quality. Moreover, Trager (1958) stated that it includes intensity (overloud to over soft), pitch height (overhigh to over low), and extent (extreme drawl to extreme clipping).
3). Vocal segregates
These are such thing as “uh-huh, “ “um,” “uh”, “ah” and variant thereof.
Theories of Acoustics Sounds
Physically, a sound is produced whenever there is a disturbance in the position of air molecules. There are sounds that we cannot hear because our ears are not sensitive to all changes in air pressure. Hence, they can be also described in physical or acoustic terms (Fromkin and Rodman, 1990, p. 406). Sounds are distinguished basically in terms of three dimensions: their amplitudo or loudness, measured in decibels (dB); their pitch or frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz); and their duration ot length measured in miliseconds (msec). (Hawkins, 1984, p. 77)
In this case, acoustics phonetics concerns with any speech sounds, all of sounds which can be heard by normal human’s ear. An important tool in acoustic research is a sound spectograph and the patterns produced called spectogram. It gives a visual presentation of the sound for a particular utterance. A time is shown a long the bottom of picture, the vertical scale shows the frequency in Hz and the intensity shown by the darkness of the mark. (Ladefoged, 1975, p. 194-195). To make it clear, the following picture is the example of spectogram proposed by Ladefoged.
A spectograms of the words “heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, who’d “ as spoken in british accent.
1. Intensity
Intensity is the amount of acoustics energy in a sound, corresponding to some degree with auditory phonetic feature of loudness. It also refers to the auditory property of a sound that enables a listener to place it on a scale going from soft to loud as well as loudness (Ladefoged, 1975, p. 292). Loudness of the voice can signal the emotional and attitude of the speaker. As Fromkin and Rodman (1990) says “loudness, just as the voice that is soft and low, can signal warm and friendliness, loud tones with a raised pitch will often be interpreted as overbearing or aggressive” (p. 88).
Moreover, Ladefoged (1975) also states that loudness of the sound depends on the size of the vibration in air pressure that occur (p. 292). Intensity is related to amplitudo of vibration ( the maximum movements away from the place of rest (O’Cornor, 1973, p. 81). It concerns with the proportion to the average size of the variations in air pressure. It is usually measured in Decibels, abbreviated as dB. So, Acoustic intensity is the appropriate measure corresponding to loudness.
2. Pitch
The sounds that people produce can be described in terms how fast the vibrations of air pressure occur. It determines the fundamental frequency of the sounds, which is perceived by the hearer called as pitch (Fromkin and Rodman, 1990, p. 406). Since, speakers of all languages vary the pitch of their voices when they talk, and the pitch produced depends upon how fast the vocal cords vibrate, the faster the vibrate is, the higher the pitch will be. And some individual speakers also have high-pitch voices, others low pitch and other medium pitch.
Furthermore, the other linguist also states the pitch of a sound depends on the rate of vibration of the vocal cords ( Ladefoged, 1975, p. 186). The pitch of a sound is that auditory property which enables a listener to place it on scale going from low to high. When a speech sound goes up in frequency, it also goes up in pitch. And, when vocal cords are vibrating, there are regularly spaced vertical lines on spectogram, because each opening and closing of the vocal cords causes peak of air pressure in the sound waves. It means that in a sound with a high pitch, there is a higher frequency of a vibration than in a sound with a lower pitch.
Many different kinds of information can be conveyed by variation in pitch. It conveys a great deal of nonlinguistics information about the speaker’s emotional feelings, whether the person is angry, happy, surprised, sad and so on. As yet, nobody knows if the pitch changes in conveying those kinds of information are universal. Related to this case, pitch is necessary to find meaning which is informed by the speaker.
3. Extent
In phonetic, extent refers to the length of time (duration) involved in uttering sounds. Crystal (1991) distinguishes between relatively long and relatively short duration in measurements unit of times, it is millisecond ( msec). In speech, the absolute duration of sounds is dependent on a considerable extent to the tempo of speaking (p. 115). The period of time which is needed to utter a sound from the beginning until the end is also called length of time or extent.. The actual length of sounds in speech is varies greatly.
Related to the Knapp’s theory, the length of time or extent is divided into two categories. They are drawling and clipping. A drawl Ye-a-h! or W-e-l-l ! can indicate insolence or reservation, whereas a clipped Nope! or certainly not! indicate sharpeness or irritation. Drawling or clipping can be used to change the literal meaning of an utterance. So, it can be said that to speak or to say something slowly with vowel sounds that are longer than usual is drawling. Meanwhile, clipping is a person’s way of speaking clear and fast in particular length of time but not very friendly to reduce the time.
Furthermore, Hall (1959) gives examples that people who often stop their conversation suddenly, full of any vocalization like: “mmm, eh or ah” will ruin their effectivenes as a communicator. The long time of stopping and many vocalizations appear in the middle of sending the idea can disturb and change the meaning intended by the speaker. If they use accenting and variation, “stop” means to affirm the nonverbal message, not to long time and silent, happened once at the end of idea particularly (in Tubbs and Moss, 1996, p. 146).
Emotional Expression
Talking about emotion, we deal with human feeling that could be experienced. It is one of human being characteristics that has existed since one’s birth. Speakers in many languages are able to produce expressed emotion.
Furthermore, in relation to vocal cues, Davitz (1959) gives the example of vocal cues associated with various emotional expressions from several isolated studies. Speakers tend to speak loudly in high pitch, fast in tempo, and clipped to express their emotion of anger. In other case, sadness can be expressed softly in volume, low pitch, slow rate, and slurred. (in Knapp 1972, p. 162)
According to Yerkes (1989), Emotion is an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate or the like is experienced as distinguish from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness (p. 467). It is usually considered as a feeling about one’s reaction to certain important events or thoughts. Goleman (2006) classified it into eight primary emotions; they are anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, love, embarrassment, and joy. (p. 411-412)
1. Anger
Hornby (1995) states that anger is a strong feeling of annoyance and hostility. Anger occurs when something has happened that we think is bad and unfair. This includes annoyance, irritation, exasperation, and offended. People express anger variously. One of the ways is by manipulating the voice. Sometimes the speaker’s voice is meaningful besides the words themselves. Shortness of breath, yelling, speech, faster motion, and more intense are symptoms of anger common occur. (p. 39)
2. Fear
Fear is an unpleasant feeling that is caused by the possibility of danger, pain, a threat, evil, etc (Hornby, 1995, p. 425). It is related to a number of emotional states including worry, anxiety, fright, panic, and, dread. These extreme feelings can usually be expressed by screaming, crying, or yelling. Then, the expression of fear is influenced by the context of situation when and where the utterances occur. The same emotion maybe expressed differently by different people at different time.
3. Sadness
Sadness is spontaneous feeling which may be caused by sorrow, melancholy, self-pity, loneliness, or despair (Hornby, 1995, p. 1035). The feeling of sadness can be seen through speaker’s voice characteristics and vocalizations, such as: crying, groaning, moaning, etc. Sometimes dissatisfaction or disappointment can be also as sadness, because something that we hoped has not happened. So, in this case, it is needed to include the context of situation to find the characteristics of sadness.
4. Disgust
Disgust is a strong feeling of dislike or disapproval for somebody/ something that you feel is unacceptable (something that looks, smells, touch unpleasant) (Hornby, 1995, p. 332). In other words, it is a powerful response that protects us from danger.
5. Surprise
Surprise is a feeling caused by something that happening suddenly or unexpectedly (Hornby, 1995, p. 1203). Commonly, surprise is just an event, a piece of news that comes directly or indirectly. Wide eyes are a common facial expression of surprise. Spontaneous surprise is often expressed for only a fraction a second. It may be followed immediately by the emotion of fear or joy, but depends on the context of situation.
6. Love
Love is a strong feeling of deep affection for somebody or something. (Hornby, 1995, p. 699). More casually, it can also be construed as a great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods. This emotional feeling includes acceptance, friendship, respect, and trust.
7. Embarrassment
Embarrassment is a feeling of being ashamed, awkward, or feels guilty for mistakes. (Hornby, 1995, p. 375). It is an emotional state experienced upon having a socially or professionally unacceptable act or condition witnessed by or revealed to others. Usually some amount of loss of honor or dignity is involved, but how much and the type depends on the embarrassing situation. It is include contemptible, mistake, disgrace.
8. Joy or Happiness
Joy is a feeling or expression of happiness, pleasure, contentment, and satisfaction (Hornby, 1995, p. 642). This includes happiness, joy, pride, rapture, and satisfaction. There are many ways to express happiness, such as laughing, yelling, smiling, crying, and screaming. According to Davitz (1959) (in Knapp 1972, p. 163), the characteristics of happiness in term of vocal paralanguage in expressing emotional or affective state, the voice tends to be: loud in volume, high in pitch, and medium in tempo. However, the way of expressing them can be different each other.
Furthermore, people are sometimes not fully aware of their own emotions. They communicate most of their emotions by means of words, a variety of other sounds, facial expressions, and gestures. Anger sometimes causes many people to frown, make a fist, and yell.
Functions of Nonverbal Communication
Knapp (1972) said that verbal and nonverbal communication must be learned together as a total an inseparable unit, since both of them support each other (p. 8-9). Moreover, he also stated that there are some functions of nonverbal communication toward verbal communication which is used in human interaction (p. 9-11), they are:
1. Repeating
Nonverbal communication can simple repeat what was said verbally. For instance, if you told a person that he had to go north to find a newspaper stand and then pointed in the proper direction. This would be considered repetition.
2. Contradicting
Nonverbal behavior can contradict verbal behavior. For instance, the parent who yells to his child in angry voice “Of course I love you!” or the person who is about to make a public speech whose hands and knees tremble, beads of perspiration from around his brow and with confidence he states “ I’m not nervous”.
3. Substituting
Nonverbal behavior can substitute the vocal verbal message. When someone sees her familiar friend wearing a certain facial expression, she does not need to ask, “ How’s it going?”. In the same way, experience has probably shown her that other kinds of looks, gestures, and other clues say, “I’m angry with you” or “I feel great” far better than words. Sometimes, when substitute nonverbal behavior fails, the communicator resorts back to the verbal level.
4. Complementing
Nonverbal behavior can modify, or elaborate on verbal messages. For example a student who was talking to his teacher. His head was bowed slightly, his voice was low and hesitating, and he shuffled slowly from foot to foot. It may be concluded that he felt inferior to the teacher, or embarassed about something he did.
5. Accenting
Nonverbal behavior may accent parts of the verbal messages much as underlining written words, or italicizing them, serves to emphasize them. When a father scolds his son about staying out too late at night, he may emphasize a particular phrase with a firm grip on the son’s shoulder and an accompanying frown on his face.
6. Relating and Regulating
Nonverbal communication is also used to regulate the communicative flow between the interactants. A head nod, eye movement, or shift in position-any one of these, or combination of them, may signal the other person to continue to speak or to stop speaking because you want to say something.
Context
Context takes an important role in finding the meaning of non verbal vocal cues in interpreting emotional expression of its speaker. As stated by Knapp (1972), “we rely on context to discriminate emotions with similar characteristics. Thus, when we are confronted with such cues, and no context, we find discriminations difficult.”(p. 162). In addition, Yule (1972) also states that:
Context is the physical environment in which a word is used. It is perhaps more easily recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions that are interpreted. Context also takes an important role in circumtances and environment in which language is used. (p. 125)
Furthermore, Levinson (1978) also defines context as the surrounding condition in which something takes place. It can give a contribution to the hearer in interpreting what the speaker actually means (p. 23). So, to understand the emotional meaning from the speaker and its function towards verbal statement in pragmatic approach, context is important.
Baca Selengkapnya..
