Cross-linguistic and Cultural effects on the perception of emotions

An acoustic analysis was conducted to investigate voice quality related parameters in European Portuguese (EP) emotional speech. The main objectives were to obtain, to our knowledge for the first time, values for the parameters commonly contemplated in acoustic analyses of emotional speech; to compare the obtained values with the ones reported for other languages (fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, Harmonic Noise Ratio and autocorrelation), in order to determine which follow general tendencies and which are characteristic of the EP language. It was also investigate the influence of knowing a language and related culture on the perception of emotions. The research main focus was centered in three different groups (EP, American English and Cantonese speakers) of speakers which results were compared. A small corpus contemplating five emotions (joy, sadness, despair, fear, anger) and neutral speech produced by a professional actor was created and used. Emotion expression and perception have many universal characteristics. However, Portuguese language proved to have some particularities. Values obtained for neutral expression, sadness, and joy are very close, contrary to what happens in other languages. Moreover, these three emotions (from distinct families) are those that present the bigger difficulty (to all of the informant groups) in the distinction perceptual tests. It was also found that in European Portuguese, differently from other languages, sadness, joy and neutral condition present the main difficulties to be differentiated by foreigner speakers and even by the native European Portuguese speakers. This is probably the main particularity in emotion expression as far as Portuguese is concerned, maybe due to cultural factors.