Mentire in due lingue: la prosodia del parlato ingannevole in italiano e cinese L1/L2

We propose a cross-linguistic study of deceptive communication, comparing Italian and Chinese when used as both L1 and L2. The relationship between speech and lying has been mostly investigated in English, but we have to be careful not to draw generalizations from the results of such analyses, since the linguistic cues of lying could be language and culture dependent. For this study we selected 5 Italian speakers of Chinese and 5 Chinese speakers of Italian, all females, with a mean age of 23, all having spent one academic year at the university of the L2 country and with a C1 level of L2 competence. We asked each subject to be interviewed by native speakers in both considered languages and to give their opinion (once by telling the truth and once by lying about their opinion) on four socially relevant topics, chosen on the basis of a previous survey. Participants and interviewers were not aware of the specific research goal, believing rather that they were taking part in a study on persuasiveness. Through the use of the speech-analysis tool Praat, we then analyzed all the audio- taped interviews, and we calculated various prosodic indices for each speech chain, such as articulation rate, speech rate, fluency, percentage of pauses, tonal range. The results showed that some of the considered indices are differently significant with respect to L1 and L2 behaviors, and to the truthfulness/ deceptiveness of speech as well.