Prosodic Cues and Intercultural Communication Competence in English and French

Dilton Serra; Márcia Polaczek

doi:10.53941/ics.2026.100007

Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the influence of prosodic factors in the perception of English and French. Two experimental studies were conducted at doctoral level in order to investigate how prosody can influence perception and comprehension in foreign languages. To achieve the goals, perception tests were applied. The first study investigated the perception of English cognate words lexical stress by Brazilian Portuguese (hereinafter BP) native speakers who learn English as a second language (hereafter L2). The second study investigated the participation of prosodic clues as disambiguating elements of utterances spoken in French. The results showed that a set of prosodic clues were related to the perception of English and French, suggesting that prosody interacts with other linguistic levels, playing an important role in the perception and comprehension of linguistic information. The findings may be of interest and also contribute to intercultural communication (IC) studies that focus on L2 teaching.

References

1.
Altmann, H. (2006). The perception and production of second language stress: A cross-linguistic experimental study [Doctoral dissertation, University of Delaware].
2.
Barbosa, P. A. (2000). Syllable-timing in Brazilian Portuguese: Uma crítica a Roy Major. DELTA, 16(2), 369–402. (In Portuguese)
3.
Beddor, P. S. (2017). Speech perception in phonetics. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.62.
4.
Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 171–204). York Press.
5.
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2005). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer software]. University of Amsterdam.
6.
Brawerman-Albini, A. (2012) Os efeitos de um treinamento de percepção na aquisição do padrão acentual pré-proparoxítono da língua inglesa por estudantes brasileiros [Doutorado em Letras. Universidade Federal do Paraná]. https://acervodigital.ufpr.br/xmlui/handle/1884/28571. (In Portuguese)
7.
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multilingual Matters.
8.
Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence: Revisited. Multilingual Matters.
9.
Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. (1996). Teaching pronunciation. Cambridge University Press.
10.
Cruttenden, A. (1997). Intonation. Cambridge University Press.
11.
Di Cristo, A. (2013). La prosodie de la parole. De Boeck.
12.
Diehl, R. L., Lotto, A. J., & Holt, L. L. (2004) Speech perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 149–179.
13.
Dupoux, E., & Peperkamp, S. (2002). Fossil markers of language development: Phonological ‘deafness’ in adult speech processing. In J. Durand & B. Laks (Eds.), Phonetics, phonology and cognition (pp. 168–190). Oxford University Press.
14.
Flege, J. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 233–277). York Press.
15.
Flege, J. (2003). A method for assessing the perception of vowels in a second language. In E. Fava & A. Mioni (Eds.), Issues in clinical linguistics (pp. 19–43). Unipress.
16.
Flege, J. (2005, April 14–15). Origins and development of the Speech Learning Model [Conference presentation]. 1st ASA Workshop on L2 Speech Learning, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
17.
Fuchs, C. (1996). Les ambiguïtés du français. Ophrys.
18.
Kuhl, P. K. (2000). A new view of language acquisition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 97, 11850–11857.
19.
Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5, 831–843.
20.
Ladefoged, P. (2003). Phonetic Data Analysis: An Introduction to Fieldwork and Instrumental Techniques. Blackwell.
21.
Laver, J. (1994). Principles of phonetics. Cambridge University Press.
22.
Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Shankweiler, D. P., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review, 74, 431–461.
23.
Mannell, R. (2007). Introduction to prosody theories and models. Macquarie University. https://www.mq.edu.au/faculty-of-medicine-health-and-human-sciences/departments-and-schools/department-of-linguistics/our-research/phonetics-and-phonology/speech/phonetics-and-phonology/intonation-prosody.
24.
Massaro, D. W. (2001). Speech perception. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of social and behavioral sciences. Elsevier.
25.
McConachy, T., Golubeva, I., & Wagner, M. (Eds.). (2022). Intercultural learning in language education and beyond: Evolving concepts, perspectives and practices. Multilingual Matters.
26.
Migliorini, L., & Massini-Cagliari, G. (2010). Sobre o ritmo do português brasileiro. ReVEL, 8(15).
27.
Polaczek, M. (2019). Percepção do acento lexical do inglês por falantes nativos de português do Brasil [Doctoral thesis, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo]. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/22657. (In Portuguese)
28.
Rauber, A., Rato, A., Kluge, D. C., dos Santos, G. R., & Figueiredo, M. (2010). TP: Testes/treinamentos de percepção [Computer software]. http://www.worken.com.br/tp_regfree.php.
29.
Serra, D. (2021). O papel da prosódia como portadora de sentido na desambiguização de enunciados em língua francesa [Doctoral thesis, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo]. https://repositorio.pucsp.br/jspui/handle/handle/24720. (In Portuguese)

Scilight Press

Author Information

Abstract

Keywords

References

About Scilight

Journals

Publishing Policies

Contact Us