The study addresses cultural influence in the recognition of moderately expressed emotions in a second language (L2) and foreign speech. The web-based listening test consisted of context-free sentences drawn from the Estonian Emotional Speech Corpus. The task was to recognize the emotion (joy, anger, sadness) or neutrality of each sentence without seeing the speaker. Three adult groups participated: (1) 36 Estonians, with Estonian as mother tongue; (2) 16 highly educated Russians living in Estonia, with Russian as their mother tongue and Estonian as a second language; (3) 16 highly educated Russians living in Russia, with Russian mother tongue and no knowledge of Estonian. The results showed a significant difference between Estonians and Russians living in Estonia in their recognition of joy and neutrality; Russians living in Russia differed significantly from Estonians and Russians living in Estonia on all emotion scores. This confirms that cultural norms are mastered through interaction: to recognize vocal emotions expressed in another language it is necessary to live in the culture and communicate in its language.
Altrov, Rene and Hille Pajupuu (2010) “Estonian emotional speech corpus: culture and age in selecting corpus testers”. In Human language technologies – the Baltic perspective: proceedings of the fourth international conference Baltic HLT 2010, 25–32. Inguna Skadina, Andrejs Vasiljevs, eds. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Altrov, Rene and Hille Pajupuu (2012) “Estonian emotional speech corpus: theoretical base and implementation”. In 4th international workshop on corpora for research on emotion sentiment & social signals (ES3), 50–53. Laurence Devillers, Björn Schuller, Anton Batliner, Paolo Rosso, Ellen Douglas-Cowie, Roddy Cowie, and Catherine Pelachaud, eds. Istanbul.
Anolli, Luigi, Lei Wang, Fabrizia Mantovani, and Alessandro De Toni (2008) “The voice of emotion in Chinese and Italian young adults”. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 39, 5, 565–598.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022108321178
Bryant, Gregory A. and H. Clark Barrett (2008) “Vocal emotion recognition across disparate cultures”. Journal of Cognition & Culture 8, 1–2, 135–148.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156770908X289242
Cheang, Henry S. and Marc D. Pell (2008) “The sound of sarcasm”. Speech Communication 50, 5, 366–381.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2007.11.003
Cowie, Roddy, Naomi Sussman, and Aaron Ben-Ze’ev (2008) “Emotions: concepts and definitions”. In Emotion-oriented systems: the HUMAINE handbook, 9–31. Roddy Cowie, Catherine Pelachaud, and Paolo Petta, eds. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer.
Juslin, Patrik N. and Petri Laukka (2003) “Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code?”. Psychological Bulletin 129, 5, 770–814.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770
Kamaruddin, Norhaslinda, Abdul Wahab, and Chai Quek (2012) “Cultural dependency analysis for understanding speech emotikon”. Expert Systems with Applications 39, 5, 5115–5133.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.11.028
Makarova, Veronika and Valery A. Petrushin (2003) “Phonetics of emotion in Russian speech”. In Proc. of the XVth international conference of phonetic sciences. D. R. M. J. Sole and J. Romero, eds. Barcelona, Spain.
Makarova, Veronika and Valery A. Petrushin (2012) “Phonetics: tracing emotions in Russian vowels”. In Russian language studies in North America: new perspectives from theoretical and applied linguistics, 3–42. Veronika Makarova, ed. (Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.) London and New York: Anthem Press.
Mitchell, Rachel L. C. (2007) “Age-related decline in the ability to decode emotional prosody: primary or secondary phenomenon?”. Cognition & Emotion 21, 7, 1435–1454.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930601133994
Pajupuu, Hille (2012) “Emotsioonid – kõnetehnoloogia olevik ja tulevik”. [Emotions – the present and future of speech technology.] Keel ja Kirjandus (Tallinn) 8-9, 629-643.
Pell, Marc D, Laura Monetta, Silke Paulmann, and Sonja A. Kotz (2009) “Recognizing emotions in a foreign language”. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 33, 2, 107–120.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-008-0065-7
Pell, Marc D., Silke Paulmann, Chinar Dara, Areej Alasseria, and Sonja A. Kotz (2009) “Factors in the recognition of vocally expressed emotions: a comparison of four languages”. Journal of Phonetics 37, 4, 417–435.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2009.07.005
Scherer, Klaus R., Elizabeth Clark-Polner, and Marcello Mortillaro (2011) “In the eye of the beholder? Universality and cultural specificity in the expression and perception of emotikon”. International Journal of Psychology 46, 6, 401–435.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2011.626049
Soto, Jose Angel and Robert W. Levenson (2009) “Emotion recognition across cultures: the influence of ethnicity on empathic accuracy and physiological linkage”. Emotion 9, 6, 874–884.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017399
Tamuri, Kairi (2012) “Intensity of Estonian emotional speech”. In Human language technologies – the Baltic perspective: proceedings of the fifth international conference Baltic HLT 2012, 238–246. Arvi Tavast, Kadri Muischnek and Mare Koit, eds. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Tamuri, Kairi and Meelis Mihkla (2012) “Emotions and speech temporal structure”. Linguistica Uralica 3, 209–217.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3176/lu.2012.3.07
Thompson, William Forde and L.-L. Balkwill (2006) “Decoding speech prosody in five languages”. Semiotica 158, 1-4, 407–424.
Toivanen, Juhani, Eero Väyrynen, and Tapio Seppänen (2004) “Automatic discrimination of emotion from spoken Finnish”. Language & Speech 47, 4, 383–412.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00238309040470040301
van Rijn, Sophie, André Aleman, Eric van Diessen, Celine Berckmoes, Guy Vingerhoets, and René S. Kahn (2005) “What is said or how it is said makes a difference: role of the right fronto-parietal operculum in emotional prosody as revealed by repetitive TMS”. The European Journal of Neuroscience 21, 11, 3195–3200.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.04130.x
