Abstract
Child-directed language is a unique multimodal
communication behaviour that differs from adult-directed
language. We investigated how broadcasters organize their
multimodal language production on an adult and child-directed
programme to better understand the recipient design in the
broadcasting context. Thirty-six future broadcasters produced
live programmes for children and adults, respectively, whose
linguistic features (utterance=3888), speech prosody, and
gestures (N=8486) were analysed as a function of programme.
We found that broadcasters used a higher mean pitch but a
smaller pitch range, shorter utterances, high(er) frequency
words, more questions, pointing and representational gestures
but fewer pragmatic gestures in child-directed broadcasting.
Gestures were also more salient and slower when addressing
children audiences. However, there were no differences in
lexical diversity, speaking rate, pausing, or beat gestures
between programmes. In conclusion, broadcasters did engage
in recipient design multimodally, but the distinction between
the speaker and audience orientation is not binary but should
be understood across signal channels according to contexts
communication behaviour that differs from adult-directed
language. We investigated how broadcasters organize their
multimodal language production on an adult and child-directed
programme to better understand the recipient design in the
broadcasting context. Thirty-six future broadcasters produced
live programmes for children and adults, respectively, whose
linguistic features (utterance=3888), speech prosody, and
gestures (N=8486) were analysed as a function of programme.
We found that broadcasters used a higher mean pitch but a
smaller pitch range, shorter utterances, high(er) frequency
words, more questions, pointing and representational gestures
but fewer pragmatic gestures in child-directed broadcasting.
Gestures were also more salient and slower when addressing
children audiences. However, there were no differences in
lexical diversity, speaking rate, pausing, or beat gestures
between programmes. In conclusion, broadcasters did engage
in recipient design multimodally, but the distinction between
the speaker and audience orientation is not binary but should
be understood across signal channels according to contexts
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society |
| Editors | M. Goldwater, F.K. Anggoro, B.K. Hayes, D.C. Ong |
| Pages | 2869-2879 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Volume | 45 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 1069-7977 |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- recipient design
- multimodal communication
- child-directed language
- broadcasting
- gesture