How do we communicate emotions in spoken language? Modelling affectual vocal qualities in storytelling

Abstract Emotion in spoken communication is conveyed through a combination of verbal, vocal and facial resources among others. This paper adopts a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective to explore the sounding potential of English to realise affectual meanings in storytelling performances. It presents a novel exploratory system network of non-segmental vocal qualities considered meaningful for the description of the phonological realisation of affectual meanings. This system of vocal qualities models semogenic vocal options using the tone unit as its root entry condition to show how the features selected by storytellers work together as contrastive bundles for the expression of affectual meanings in a corpus of eight storytelling performances of Cinderella. The results show the association between emotional meanings identified discourse semantically in terms of categories of affect and the phonological choices from the vocal qualities system interpreted as affectual vocal profiles. This paper also explores the need to include phonological descriptions in research dealing with emotion in spoken communication in inter-stratal relations between attitudinally uncharged lexicogrammatical choices and affectual vocal qualities in the Reaction phases of the storytelling performances. The paper finishes by proposing a provisional system network for inscription and invocation resources for affect in spoken language.