Harjunpaa2022
| Harjunpaa2022 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Harjunpaa2022 |
| Author(s) | Katariina Harjunpää |
| Title | Repetition and prosodic matching in responding to pets’ vocalizations |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, Animals |
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| Year | 2022 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Langage et société |
| Volume | 2/2022 |
| Number | 176 |
| Pages | 69-102 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.3917/ls.176.0071 |
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Abstract
Previous studies have identified recurrent prosodic and lexical features in the way humans talk to pets, including high pitch and repetition. This study focuses on how talking to pets, and recurrent ways of designing that talk, emerge in authentic interactions. Conversation analysis and interactional linguistics are employed to explore vocal exchanges between humans and their companion animals. The study identifies a prosodic, lexical and sequential pattern in which humans respond to a pet’s vocalization by “recycling” it in a reduplicated form and prosodically matching their utterance to it. With these resources, the speakers make their talk responsive to the pets’ own vocal conduct, forming a sequential structure with it. The study thus demonstrates the use of prosodic and lexical resources in talking to animals as an interactional practice in which speakers make their language approximate the animals’ communicative resources, resulting in a supposed reciprocal vocal action. The data consist of video-recorded interactions with speakers using Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese and English.
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