The Cadence of Quarantine: Has the Pandemic Altered Our Speech?

I drew from a data set of recorded phone interviews with 199 respondents conducted early during the COVID-19 pandemic, and again between 2024-25. Using PRAAT, an open-source speech analysis software, I analyzed hundreds of excerpts of speech from this data set and quantified their syllable nuclei counts as a means of measuring rates of speech for further comparative analysis to be performed. The goal was to aggregate data to determine as to whether these respondents' rates of speech have significantly slowed down (or not), and to further determine by way of advanced statistical modeling as to what degree their rates of speech may have been altered and what confounding factors may be contributing their alterations. The overall picture was to see if the pandemic and the COVID-19 infections/quarantine conditions it brought with it had a direct relation in impacting their rates of speech. If so, then future research may be taken as to determine whether or not any significant findings could be generalized to the overall US (or global) population.