Communication by unvoiced speech: the role of whispering.
Most studies on whispering deal with its production and perception, neglecting its communicative role. I have focused on this, especially some social and psychobiological objectives. I have combined a general inquiry into the use of unvoiced speech with stimulus-response experiments on particular signal properties. (1) Analyses of answers to queries revealed that judgments about whispering depend on the social contexts. In the private domain it plays a clearly positive role, but in the public domain it is more problematical. Two causative factors were identified as relevant: (a) an 'ingroup' function of whispering which could induce negative 'outgroup' effects in co-listeners, and (b) a psychobiological component of whispering which could affect the auditory vigilance of co-listeners who were not addressed personally by the signaling, but often wanted to understand a whispered message. (2) Analyses of experimental data confirmed the relevance of these factors. Additionally, they showed that unvoiced speech has a limited transmission range, and is easily masked by background noise. Taken together, the results suggest that whispering is explained best as a close-distance signal adapted for private use among partners.
Cirillo
Jasmin
J
Institute of Biology, Department of Behavioural Biology, Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany. nimsaj@zedat.fu-berlin.de
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012919:Social Behavior; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires