Quattro ventisette! Le componenti della comunicazione parlata. Un’indagine sull’italiano

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of voice, text and body language in message decoding by native Italian speakers. To the purpose, a script based on a real life situation - the discovery of a partner’s affair - was written. Non-professional actors were videotaped while reciting the story in a neutral environment. No props, no costumes were indeed used to indicate environments and characters. The collected corpus of speech was segmented into syllables, then the syllables of the original dialogue were replaced with number sequences. The actors read the new dialogue based on numbers without phrasing, inflection, and intonation, but pausing according to the silences marked in the text. The numeric dialogue was segmented into syllables and then, through the transplantation technique, the prosodic features of the original dialogue were transferred to the dialogue based on number. After that, three tests were administered to three groups of native Italian subjects. One group listened only to the numeric text with the prosody transplanted from the original dialogue, another watched the silent video of the performance, the last group listened to the original dialogue. After each phase subjects were administered a questionnaire intended to test the comprehension of the story in terms of setting, participants and emotions. The results of the three tests have showed that each communication channel gives a specific contribution to the message decoding. From the ‘voice’ component, it is possible to understand the kind of relationship between participants and to define their emotions with greater accuracy. Setting, participants, and actions were understood through the video, by means of body language. The ‘text’ component contributes providing details regarding the names of participants, the specific kind of place where the story takes place and the marriage relationship between the man and the betrayed woman.