Prosodic markers of satirical imitation

Satirical imitation is a popular format of late-night comedy shows and
can provide political entertainment and education. However, little research has
been conducted on how satirists mark their satirical intent to clue audiences in
on their intended messaging. This study investigates the prosodic marking of
satirical imitation and contrasts it with prosodic marking of irony. We conducted
a detailed case study of the prosodic marking in Alec Baldwin’s satirical imita-
tion of Donald Trump in his audiobook You Can’t Spell America Without Me
contrasted with both Baldwin’s and Trump’s regular voices. The analyzed
corpus contained six hours of audio material across the three sources. Through a combination of automatic and manual coding, we measured average pitch, pitch variation, and speech rate. Our analysis did not reveal marking of satirical
imitation by pitch or pitch variation. The satirical imitation was only marked by a
faster speech rate than both baseline voices. These findings contrast with pre-
vious studies that identified a lower pitch, less pitch variation, and a slower
speech rate as markers of verbal irony. Our study provides first evidence that
satirical imitation is prosodically marked differently from verbal irony, with a
faster speech rate as one potential marker.