2.1Multimodal politeness

Politeness is a complex phenomenon that has been theorized in different ways (see Eelen 2001Eelen, Gino 2001 A Critique of Politeness Theory. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.Eelen, Gino 2001 A Critique of Politeness Theory. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.; Kádár and Haugh 2013Kádár, Daniel Z., and Michael Haugh 2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge University Press. Kádár, Daniel Z., and Michael Haugh 2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge University Press. ). We follow P. Brown (2015Brown, Penelope 2015 “Politeness and Language”. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (IESBS), 2nd Ed., 326–30. Elsevier. Brown, Penelope 2015 “Politeness and Language”. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (IESBS), 2nd Ed., 326–30. Elsevier. , 326) in understanding politeness as “a matter of taking into account the feelings of others as to how they should be treated, including behaving in a manner that demonstrates appropriate concern for interactors’ social status.” We focus on how speakers change their speech production when addressing a status superior, a mode of politeness referred to in previous literature as “deference” (P. Brown and Levinson 1987Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ), “discernment politeness” (Ide 1989Ide, Sachiko 1989 “Formal Forms and Discernment: Two Neglected Aspects of Universals of Linguistic Politeness”. Multilingua 8: 223–48. Ide, Sachiko 1989 “Formal Forms and Discernment: Two Neglected Aspects of Universals of Linguistic Politeness”. Multilingua 81: 223–48. ), “indexical politeness” (L. Brown 2011Brown, Lucien 2011 Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Brown, Lucien 2011 Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. ) and “bivalent politeness” (Leech 2014Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press. Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press. ).

The study of politeness traditionally focused on verbal characteristics, with Culpeper (2011Culpeper, Jonathan 2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, Jonathan 2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. New York: Cambridge University Press. , 146) noting that “remarkably, the bulk of research on politeness or impoliteness pays woefully little attention to the role of prosody.” However, recent years have witnessed the emergence of a robust collection of research exploring the various prosodic, gestural and multimodal components of politeness (see L. Brown and Prieto 2017Brown, Lucien, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “(Im)Politeness: Prosody and Gesture”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, edited by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Daniel Z. Kádár, 357–79. London: Palgrave. Brown, Lucien, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “(Im)Politeness: Prosody and Gesture”. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, edited by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Daniel Z. Kádár, 357–79. London: Palgrave. , 2021Brown, Lucien, and Pilar Prieto 2021 “Gesture and Prosody in Multimodal Communication”. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, edited by Michael Haugh, Daniel Z. Kádár, and Marina Terkourafi, 430–53. Cambridge University Press. Brown, Lucien, and Pilar Prieto 2021 “Gesture and Prosody in Multimodal Communication”. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, edited by Michael Haugh, Daniel Z. Kádár, and Marina Terkourafi, 430–53. Cambridge University Press. ).

The use of voice pitch for marking politeness-related meanings has attracted the most attention. Brown and Levinson (1987Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 4, 268) followed by Ohala (1984)Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. and Chen et al. (2002)Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. claimed that high-pitch is universal connected to politeness since it sounds less threatening and more submissive (Ohala 1984Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. ), or because it requires more effort (Chen, Gussenhoven and Rietveld 2002Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. ). These claims found support in some subsequent empirical studies (Caballero et al. 2018Caballero, Jonathan A., Nikos Vergis, Xiaoming Jiang, and Marc D. Pell 2018 “The Sound of Im/Politeness”. Speech Communication 102: 39–53. Caballero, Jonathan A., Nikos Vergis, Xiaoming Jiang, and Marc D. Pell 2018 “The Sound of Im/Politeness”. Speech Communication 1021: 39–53. for English; Ofuka et al. 2000Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. for Japanese; Orozco 2008Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México.Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México.). However, other studies showed that high pitch was associated with meanings related to impoliteness, including aggression (Stadler 2006Stadler, Stefanie Alexa 2006 “Multimodal (Im)Politeness: The Verbal, Prosodic and Non-Verbal Realization of Disagreement in German and New Zealand English”. PhD disseration. The University of Auckland.Stadler, Stefanie Alexa 2006 “Multimodal (Im)Politeness: The Verbal, Prosodic and Non-Verbal Realization of Disagreement in German and New Zealand English”. PhD disseration. The University of Auckland.) and disagreement (Goodwin, Goodwin and Yaeger-Dror 2002Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, Charles Goodwin, and Malcah Yaeger-Dror 2002 “Multi-Modality in Girls’ Game Disputes”. Journal of Pragmatics 34 (10–11): 1621–49. Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, Charles Goodwin, and Malcah Yaeger-Dror 2002 “Multi-Modality in Girls’ Game Disputes”. Journal of Pragmatics 34 (10–11): 1621–49. ).

Further contradiction of the claims of Ohala (1984)Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. Ohala, John J. 1984 “An Ethological Perspective on Common Cross-Language Utilization of F₀ of Voice”. Phonetica 41 (1): 1–16. and Chen et al. (2002)Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. Chen, Aoju, Carlos Gussenhoven, and Toni Rietveld 2002 “Language-Specific Uses of the Effort Code”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2002, 215–218. are found in a recent sequence of studies comparing deferential speech addressed to a status superior and/or socially-distant other, with casual speech addressed to a friend and/or status equal. These studies show that lower pitch occurs in speech addressed to status superiors in Korean (L. Brown et al. 2014Brown, Lucien, Bodo Winter, Kaori Idemaru, and Sven Grawunder 2014 “Phonetics and Politeness: Perceiving Korean Honorific and Non-Honorific Speech through Phonetic Cues”. Journal of Pragmatics 66: 45–60. Brown, Lucien, Bodo Winter, Kaori Idemaru, and Sven Grawunder 2014 “Phonetics and Politeness: Perceiving Korean Honorific and Non-Honorific Speech through Phonetic Cues”. Journal of Pragmatics 661: 45–60. ; Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), German (Grawunder, Oertel and Schwarze 2014Grawunder, Sven, Marianne Oertel, and Cordula Schwarze 2014 “Politeness, Culture, and Speaking Task–Paralinguistic Prosodic Behavior of Speakers from Austria and Germany”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2014, 159–163. Grawunder, Sven, Marianne Oertel, and Cordula Schwarze 2014 “Politeness, Culture, and Speaking Task–Paralinguistic Prosodic Behavior of Speakers from Austria and Germany”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2014, 159–163. ), Catalan (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ), and Russian (see Winter et al. 2021Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. ). Meanwhile, there are no pitch differences between deferential and casual speech in Japanese (Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ) and Chinese (Oh and Cui 2020Oh, Eunhae, and Mao Cui 2020 “The Acquisition of Acoustic Correlates of Politeness by Native Chinese Speakers”. Linguistic Research 37: 113–34.Oh, Eunhae, and Mao Cui 2020 “The Acquisition of Acoustic Correlates of Politeness by Native Chinese Speakers”. Linguistic Research 371: 113–34.). Winter et al. (2021Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. , 8) following Hübscher et al. (2017)Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. claim that lower pitch is connected to politeness via associations with a more formal, “damped down” and composed mode of delivery referred to as “prosodic mitigation.” The association of a calmer mode of delivery with politeness-related meanings may be specific to certain languages, however. In Holliday et al. (2023)Holliday, Jeffrey, Abby Walker, Mihyun Jung, and Esther Sung Ryun Cho 2023 “Bringing Indexical Orders to Non-Arbitrary Meaning: The Case of Pitch and Politeness in English and Korean”. Laboratory Phonology 14 (1): 1–24. Holliday, Jeffrey, Abby Walker, Mihyun Jung, and Esther Sung Ryun Cho 2023 “Bringing Indexical Orders to Non-Arbitrary Meaning: The Case of Pitch and Politeness in English and Korean”. Laboratory Phonology 14 (1): 1–24. , Korean listeners rated lower-pitched utterances as more polite in a perception experiment, and also made connections between politeness and calmness in an accompanying questionnaire that asked them to define politeness. In contrast, English listeners rated higher-pitched utterances as more polite and never defined politeness in terms of calmness.

This “calmer” and more “damped down” way of speaking has been found to possess other acoustic characters. In Korean (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), it features lower pitch range, and decreased pitch and intensity standard deviations. Korean speakers talk slower when addressing superiors, and use breathier and clearer voice quality as indicated by higher Harmonics-to-Noise-Ratio (HNR), greater amplitude difference between the first and second harmonic (H1-H2), lower perturbation rates of local pitch and intensity changes (shimmer and jitter). They also hyperarticulate vowels, producing clearer speech (Oh, Winter and Idemaru 2021Oh, Eunhae, Bodo Winter, and Kaori Idemaru 2021 “Korean Speakers Hyperarticulate Vowels in Polite Speech”. Malsoli-Wa Umsengkwahak (Phonetics and Speech Sciences) 13 (3): 15–20. Oh, Eunhae, Bodo Winter, and Kaori Idemaru 2021 “Korean Speakers Hyperarticulate Vowels in Polite Speech”. Malsoli-Wa Umsengkwahak (Phonetics and Speech Sciences) 13 (3): 15–20. ). Japanese (Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ), Catalan (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ) and Chinese (Oh and Cui 2020Oh, Eunhae, and Mao Cui 2020 “The Acquisition of Acoustic Correlates of Politeness by Native Chinese Speakers”. Linguistic Research 37: 113–34.Oh, Eunhae, and Mao Cui 2020 “The Acquisition of Acoustic Correlates of Politeness by Native Chinese Speakers”. Linguistic Research 371: 113–34.) show similar patterns. Overall, speech addressed to a superior is lower pitched, quieter and clearer and sounds calmer, softer and less animated.

These findings fit within a wider set of multimodal features that signal deference. In addition to using grammaticized honorifics when addressing status superiors, Kim et al. (2021)Kim, Hyunji, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2021 “Beyond Politeness Markers: Multiple Morphological and Lexical Differences Index Deferential Meanings in Korean”. Journal of Pragmatics 182: 203–20. Kim, Hyunji, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2021 “Beyond Politeness Markers: Multiple Morphological and Lexical Differences Index Deferential Meanings in Korean”. Journal of Pragmatics 1821: 203–20. showed that Korean speakers use more backchannels, “hissing” sound objects (see also L. Brown, Kim and Winter 2022Brown, Lucien, Hyunji Kim, and Bodo Winter 2022 “Is It Polite to Hiss?: Nonverbal Sound Objects as Markers of (Im) Politeness in Korean”. Frontiers in Communication 7: 854066. Brown, Lucien, Hyunji Kim, and Bodo Winter 2022 “Is It Polite to Hiss?: Nonverbal Sound Objects as Markers of (Im) Politeness in Korean”. Frontiers in Communication 71: 854066. ), formal case markers and Sino-Korean lexical items. At the same time, they decrease their use of um-/uh-type sound objects, ideophones and case particle ellipsis. In terms of bodily visual practices, speakers maintain direct bodily orientation and gaze on the line of sight when addressing status superiors and also produce more head nods, whereas they suppressed gestures, as well as head shaking, self-touches and haptics (L. Brown, Hübscher et al. 2023Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher, and Andreas Jucker 2023 “Multimodal Im/Politeness: Introduction”. In Multimodal Im/Politeness: Signed, Spoken, Written, edited by Andreas Jucker, Iris Hübscher, and Lucien Brown, 1–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher, and Andreas Jucker 2023 “Multimodal Im/Politeness: Introduction”. In Multimodal Im/Politeness: Signed, Spoken, Written, edited by Andreas Jucker, Iris Hübscher, and Lucien Brown, 1–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. for Korean and Catalan; L. Brown and Winter 2019Brown, Lucien, and Bodo Winter 2019 “Multimodal Indexicality in Korean: “Doing Deference” and “Performing Intimacy” through Nonverbal Behavior”. Journal of Politeness Research 15 (1): 25–54. Brown, Lucien, and Bodo Winter 2019 “Multimodal Indexicality in Korean: “Doing Deference” and “Performing Intimacy” through Nonverbal Behavior”. Journal of Politeness Research 15 (1): 25–54. for Korean only). Manual gestures also become less expressive (L. Brown, Kim et al. 2023Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher, Hyunji Kim, and Bodo Winter 2023 “Indexing Social Distance through Bodily Visual Practices in Two Languages”. In Multimodal Im/Politeness: Signed, Spoken, Written, edited by Andreas Jucker, Iris Hübscher, and Lucien Brown, 131–61. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Brown, Lucien, Iris Hübscher, Hyunji Kim, and Bodo Winter 2023 “Indexing Social Distance through Bodily Visual Practices in Two Languages”. In Multimodal Im/Politeness: Signed, Spoken, Written, edited by Andreas Jucker, Iris Hübscher, and Lucien Brown, 131–61. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. , for Korean and Catalan).

The current paper extends this research agenda into the multimodality of politeness by investigating the prosodic features of Korean deferential speech in interactional data. Whereas previous studies of Korean deferential speech have looked at acoustic properties averaged across the entire utterance, the current paper focusses on smaller prosodic units to provide a more detailed analysis. This approach resonates with other phonetic studies of politeness that have looked at the localization of acoustic features (e.g., Astruc, Vanrell and Prieto 2016Astruc, Lluisa, Maria del Mar Vanrell, and Pilar Prieto 2016 “Cost of the Action and Social Distance Affect the Selection of Question Intonation in Catalan”. In Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across Linguistic Subfields, edited by Meghan E. Armstrong, Nicholas Henriksen, and Maria del Mar Vanrell, 91–114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Astruc, Lluisa, Maria del Mar Vanrell, and Pilar Prieto 2016 “Cost of the Action and Social Distance Affect the Selection of Question Intonation in Catalan”. In Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across Linguistic Subfields, edited by Meghan E. Armstrong, Nicholas Henriksen, and Maria del Mar Vanrell, 91–114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Herraiz and Serena 2014Herraiz, Empar Devís, and Francisco José Cantero Serena 2014 “The Intonation of Mitigating Politeness in Catalan”. Journal of Politeness Research 10 (1): 127–149. Herraiz, Empar Devís, and Francisco José Cantero Serena 2014 “The Intonation of Mitigating Politeness in Catalan”. Journal of Politeness Research 10 (1): 127–149. ; Orozco 2008Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México.Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México., 2010Orozco, Leonor 2010 “Estudio Sociolingüístico de La Cortesía En Tratamientos y Peticiones. Datos de Guadalajara”. PhD dissertation. El Colegio de México.Orozco, Leonor 2010 “Estudio Sociolingüístico de La Cortesía En Tratamientos y Peticiones. Datos de Guadalajara”. PhD dissertation. El Colegio de México.; Wichmann 2000Wichmann, Anne 2000 “The Attitudinal Effects of Prosody, and How They Relate to Emotion”. In ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop (ITRW) on Speech and Emotion. Belfast: Textflow.Wichmann, Anne 2000 “The Attitudinal Effects of Prosody, and How They Relate to Emotion”. In ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop (ITRW) on Speech and Emotion. Belfast: Textflow.).

2.2Korean prosodic system

Our study divides the speech data into smaller prosodic units, namely Intonational Phrases (IP) and Accentual Phrases (AP), following Jun’s (2018)Jun, Sun-Ah 2018 The Phonetics and Phonology of Korean Prosody: Intonational Phonology and Prosodic Structure. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Jun, Sun-Ah 2018 The Phonetics and Phonology of Korean Prosody: Intonational Phonology and Prosodic Structure. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. model of Korean prosody. Here we introduce the concepts of IP and AP and their importance for politeness and other affective meanings.

The Accentual Phrase (AP) is the smallest prosodic unit that can be recognized by pitch contour and is roughly similar in length to a syntactic word. In Korean, it tends to be comprised of a lexical word plus any following particles and is typically 3–4 syllables (Jeon 2015Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. ). As for the Intonational Phrase (IP), this is an interval of speech roughly equivalent to a syntactic clause. It occurs with a single prosodic contour and is demarcated by a boundary tone and final lengthening at the end (Jun 2018Jun, Sun-Ah 2018 The Phonetics and Phonology of Korean Prosody: Intonational Phonology and Prosodic Structure. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Jun, Sun-Ah 2018 The Phonetics and Phonology of Korean Prosody: Intonational Phonology and Prosodic Structure. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. ). An IP can contain one or more APs, whereas an utterance can also be constructed from multiple IPs. The following example (from Jeon 2015Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. , 43) shows an IP containing four APs:

The edges of larger prosodic units tend to attract phonetic strengthening (Choi, Kim and Cho 2020Choi, Jiyoun, Sahyang Kim, and Taehong Cho 2020 “An Apparent-Time Study of an Ongoing Sound Change in Seoul Korean: A Prosodic Account”. Plos One 15 (10): e0240682. Choi, Jiyoun, Sahyang Kim, and Taehong Cho 2020 “An Apparent-Time Study of an Ongoing Sound Change in Seoul Korean: A Prosodic Account”. Plos One 15 (10): e0240682. ; Fougeron and Keating 1996Fougeron, Cécile, and Patricia A. Keating 1996 “Articulatory Strengthening in Prosodic Domain-Initial Position”. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 61–87.Fougeron, Cécile, and Patricia A. Keating 1996 “Articulatory Strengthening in Prosodic Domain-Initial Position”. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 61–87.), in other words, acoustic features become enhanced or exaggerated. Also, the ends and optimally the beginning of the IP mark affective meanings. In particular, utterance-final boundary tones (i.e., rises or falls in pitch that mark the end of the utterance) not only carry speakers’ emotions, but also allow listeners to decode vocal expressions most accurately (H.-Y. Lee 1990Lee, Ho-Young 1990 Kwukewunyullon [Korean Prosody]. Seoul: Hankwukyenkwuwen [Korean Study Institute].Lee, Ho-Young 1990 Kwukewunyullon [Korean Prosody]. Seoul: Hankwukyenkwuwen [Korean Study Institute].; T.-S. Lee, Park and Kim 2005Lee, Tae-Seung, Mikyong Park, and Tae-Soo Kim 2005 “Toward More Reliable Emotion Recognition of Vocal Sentences by Emphasizing Information of Korean Ending Boundary Tones”. In Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference. Lee, Tae-Seung, Mikyong Park, and Tae-Soo Kim 2005 “Toward More Reliable Emotion Recognition of Vocal Sentences by Emphasizing Information of Korean Ending Boundary Tones”. In Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference. ). For this reason, in the current paper, we analyzed the prosodic qualities of APs that occur in IP-initial position and IP-final position, as described in Section 3.

The final syllable in the IP is marked with a boundary tone and significant lengthening, which are known to be rich sites of meanings in Korean. Final syllables become longer in emotionally charged speech, and speakers perceive longer syllables as signaling higher arousal (excitement), but low valence (negativity) (Jeon 2014Jeon, Hae-Sung 2014 “The Perception of Korean Boundary Tones by First and Second Language Speakers”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody, edited by Nick Campbell, Dafyd Gibbon, and Daniel Hirst, 954–58. Jeon, Hae-Sung 2014 “The Perception of Korean Boundary Tones by First and Second Language Speakers”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody, edited by Nick Campbell, Dafyd Gibbon, and Daniel Hirst, 954–58. ). And boundary tones convey various meanings related to information status, affect, and discourse structure. According to Park (2012)Park, Mee-Jeong 2012 The Meaning of Korean Prosodic Boundary Tones. Brill.Park, Mee-Jeong 2012 The Meaning of Korean Prosodic Boundary Tones. Brill., a low tone marks certainty, whereas high tone marks uncertainty. A low tone directs attention towards the speaker and their cognitive or spatial domain, creating an authoritative stance, but a high tone is hearer-directed, displaying interest or openness towards the addressee. Along similar lines, Kim (2010)Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie 2010 “A High Boundary Tone as a Resource for a Social Action: The Korean Sentence-Ender–Ta”. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11): 3055–77. Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie 2010 “A High Boundary Tone as a Resource for a Social Action: The Korean Sentence-Ender–Ta”. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11): 3055–77. observed that when the sentence ender -ta occurs with a low boundary tone it denotes newly perceived information for the speaker, whereas a high boundary tone highlights newness and announceability for the hearer. Jeon (2014)Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press. Leech, Geoffrey N. 2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press. found that in general pitch range expansion (i.e., using greater pitch variation) on final syllables was perceived by Korean listeners as signaling heightened positivity and excitement. Due to the importance of the final syllable in the IP as a site for pragmatic meanings, we carried out a separate analysis of IP-final syllables.

2.3Phonetic features analyzed in the current study

We follow Winter and Grawunder (2012)Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. , Hübscher et al. (2017)Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. and Idemaru et al. (2019)Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. in analyzing a swathe of phonetic features that mark politeness-related contrasts. Examining the same range of features investigated in these previous studies is crucial to establish a comprehensive profile of Korean interactional data, comparable to previous studies of non-interactional data in Korean (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), Japanese (Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ), Catalan (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ) and other languages. This section describes the relevant phonetic features in more detail, highlighting the results from Korean non-interactional data (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ).

The first phonetic feature we measured was fundamental frequency (F0), which corresponds to perceived pitch. As discussed in Section 2.1, there is a long history of studies that have associated pitch with politeness-related meanings. Whereas some research has shown that politeness is marked by high pitch (Caballero et al. 2018Caballero, Jonathan A., Nikos Vergis, Xiaoming Jiang, and Marc D. Pell 2018 “The Sound of Im/Politeness”. Speech Communication 102: 39–53. Caballero, Jonathan A., Nikos Vergis, Xiaoming Jiang, and Marc D. Pell 2018 “The Sound of Im/Politeness”. Speech Communication 1021: 39–53. ; Ofuka et al. 2000Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. ; Orozco 2008Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México.Orozco, Leonor 2008 “Peticiones Corteses y Factores Prosódicos”. In Fonología Instrumental. Patrones Fónicos y Variación, edited by Z. E. Herrera, and P. Martín Butragueño, 335–55. México D.F: El Colegio de México.), studies looking at deferential speech addressed to status superiors have tended to show that lower pitch is used, including in Korean (see Winter et al. 2021Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. ; Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ) and Catalan (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ; see also Winter et al. 2021Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. Winter, Bodo, Grace Eunhae Oh, Iris Hübscher, Kaori Idemaru, Lucien Brown, Pilar Prieto, and Sven Grawunder 2021 “Rethinking the Frequency Code: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Role of Acoustic Body Size in Communicative Phenomena”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376 (1840): 20200400. for a meta-analysis). Winter and Grawunder (2012)Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. found main effects for mean fundamental frequency, as well as standard deviation (SD) and range, with deferential speech showing lower pitch and smaller variability in SD and range.

The loudness of speech was measured in terms of intensity, which captures the amount of energy in a signal. Although Winter and Grawunder (2012)Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. did not find a main effect for intensity, they showed main effects for SD and range. Intensity variability and range was lower in deferential speech, at least for female participants. Furthermore, Idemaru et al. (2020)Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, Lucien Brown, and Grace Eunhae Oh 2020 “Loudness Trumps Pitch in Politeness Judgments: Evidence from Korean Deferential Speech”. Language and Speech 63 (1): 123–48. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, Lucien Brown, and Grace Eunhae Oh 2020 “Loudness Trumps Pitch in Politeness Judgments: Evidence from Korean Deferential Speech”. Language and Speech 63 (1): 123–48. showed that quieter speech was a strong perceptual cue for politeness in Korean. Other studies showing a link between lower intensity and politeness include Idemaru et al. (2019)Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. and Sherr-Ziarko (2019)Sherr-Ziarko, Ethan 2019 “Prosodic Properties of Formality in Conversational Japanese”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 49 (3): 331–52. Sherr-Ziarko, Ethan 2019 “Prosodic Properties of Formality in Conversational Japanese”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 49 (3): 331–52. for Japanese, Hübscher et al. (2017)Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. for Catalan, and Grawunder et al. (2014)Grawunder, Sven, Marianne Oertel, and Cordula Schwarze 2014 “Politeness, Culture, and Speaking Task–Paralinguistic Prosodic Behavior of Speakers from Austria and Germany”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2014, 159–163. Grawunder, Sven, Marianne Oertel, and Cordula Schwarze 2014 “Politeness, Culture, and Speaking Task–Paralinguistic Prosodic Behavior of Speakers from Austria and Germany”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2014, 159–163. for German.

We measured several acoustic correlates for “voice quality,” which refers to perceptual characteristics such as breathiness, creakiness, hoarseness, and clarity. Specifically, we measured jitter, shimmer, H1-H2, and Harmonics to Noise Ratio (HNR). Jitter and shimmer are indices of irregularities in pitch and loudness, respectively. Lower jitter and shimmer result in a smoother voice, whereas higher values associate with hoarseness (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ). As for H1-H2 (first harmonic minus second harmonic), higher values indicate breathy voicing and lower values characterize creaky voicing. The HNR measures noise in the voice signal, with higher readings sounding clearer and lower readings rougher (Ferrand 2002Ferrand, Carole T. 2002 “Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio: An Index of Vocal Aging”. Journal of Voice 16 (4): 480–87. Ferrand, Carole T. 2002 “Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio: An Index of Vocal Aging”. Journal of Voice 16 (4): 480–87. ). Winter and Grawunder (2012)Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. found that deferential speech in Korean featured decreased jitter, decreased shimmer (only females), decreased H1-H2 (only females) and increased HNR (marginal result, only females). Thus, deferential speech sounded smoother, less hoarse, less breathy and less rough. For Japanese, Idemaru et al. (2019)Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. found no main effects for jitter and shimmer, higher H1-H2 (breathier, the opposite to Korean) and higher HNR (clearer). For Catalan, Hübscher et al. (2017)Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. found decreased shimmer and tendencies for decreased jitter and decreased H1-H2 (less breathy, as in Korean).

Due to our focus on smaller prosodic units, we did not measure speech rate in the current study. But we did examine duration, which we measured as the length of Acccentual Phrases (AP) and Intonational Phrases (IP). Winter and Grawunder (2012)Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. found that deferential utterances in Korean tended to be longer and slower. Idemaru et al. (2019)Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. found that Japanese deferential utterances are longer but not necessarily slower (but see Ito 2004Ito, Mika 2004 “Politeness and Voice Quality-the Alternative Method to Measure Aspiration Noise”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2004, 213–216. Ito, Mika 2004 “Politeness and Voice Quality-the Alternative Method to Measure Aspiration Noise”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2004, 213–216. and Ofuka et al. 2000Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. Ofuka, Etsuko, J. Denis McKeown, Mitch G. Waterman, and Peter J. Roach 2000 “Prosodic Cues for Rated Politeness in Japanese Speech”. Speech Communication 32 (3): 199–217. for studies that show slower speech rate for Japanese). In Catalan, deferential utterances are both slower and longer (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ).

3.1Participants

We collected speech materials from fourteen Korean speakers (seven female, seven male), who were undergraduate students at a university in Seoul. Born and raised in the Seoul/Gyeonggi area, they were aged 22 on average (range 19–27). Five reported experience of residing overseas for an average of eleven months (range from five to twenty months), each in a different country (Philippines, Canada, USA, Sweden, Cambodia). All of them nominated English as their second language, but only one reported advanced proficiency (nine intermediate, four novice). All participants reported normal hearing.

3.2Task and procedure

We set out to collect data that would allow us to examine the acoustic properties of deferential speech and compare them to the casual speech one might use with a friend. Thus, each of our main participants took part in two recordings: one with a friend and one with a status superior. For the friend recording, participants were asked to bring a same-gender friend, although two male participants brought female friends.11.Examination of the data collected from these two participants confirmed that they followed the same patterns as other male participants. The friends were the same age as the main participants (average age = 22). Eleven were born and raised in Seoul, with the remaining three coming from different provinces (Chungcheong, Jeolla, Jeju). Two of them had experience living overseas in Taiwan and the UK. While thirteen of the friends named English as their second language (all intermediate or novice), the participant who had lived in Taiwan spoke advanced Chinese.

For the status superior interaction, we recruited a sixty-year-old professor from the same university who was not well known to the participants. The professor was originally from Gyeongsang province but had lived in Seoul for over thirty years and spoke in Standard Seoul Korean during the tasks. He had previous experience of living in the USA for six years and reported advanced English proficiency. We used the same professor for all recordings in order to minimize variation, although this meant that the interactions between the female main participants and the professor differed slightly from other recordings in being mixed gender.

Each recording session lasted about thirty minutes and all participants received small payments. The two recordings (friend, status superior) took place on different days. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to the “superior” condition first and the other half to the “friend” condition.

In both recording sessions, participants completed the same two tasks (about fifteen minutes each): a conversation task and a map task in that order. The conversation task involved a spontaneous conversation about movies that they watched recently. This encouraged casual interaction and took place before the map task as a warm-up activity. The map task (Anderson et al. 1991Anderson, Anne H., Miles Bader, Ellen Gurman Bard, Elizabeth Boyle, Gwyneth Doherty, Simon Garrod, Stephen Isard, Jacqueline Kowtko, Jan McAllister, and Jim Miller 1991 “The HCRC Map Task Corpus”. Language and Speech 34 (4): 351–66. Anderson, Anne H., Miles Bader, Ellen Gurman Bard, Elizabeth Boyle, Gwyneth Doherty, Simon Garrod, Stephen Isard, Jacqueline Kowtko, Jan McAllister, and Jim Miller 1991 “The HCRC Map Task Corpus”. Language and Speech 34 (4): 351–66. ) involves explaining a route between two points on a map to a partner who has a similar map, and who is tasked with tracing the exact route described to them. The maps are designed to have slight mismatches to provoke more interaction.

Recordings took place in a sound-attenuated booth. The productions were recorded using an Audio-Technica AT 899 lavalier microphone on a Marantz PMD670 solid-state recorder at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate with 16-bit quantization.

3.3Acoustic analysis

Using Praat version 6.0.35 (Boersma and Weenik 2017Boersma, Paul, and David Weenik 2017 “Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer”. https://​www​.fon​.hum​.uva​.nl​/praat/Boersma, Paul, and David Weenik 2017 “Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer”. https://​www​.fon​.hum​.uva​.nl​/praat/), the second author, who is a trained phonetician and K-ToBI transcriber, identified and coded Intonational Phrases (IPs), Accentual Phrases (APs), and IP-final syllables. IPs with only one AP were excluded from the analysis, as were interrogative sentences with a raised pitch (2.3% of total data).

Two analyses were conducted. The first analysis looked just at the IP-initial and IP-final APs, which would be equivalent to emma-ka ‘mother-nm’ and tul-ess-eyo ‘hold-pst-pol’ in the following example (repeated from Section 2.2):

These initial and final APs are known to be rich sites for phonetic strengthening and pragmatic marking (Choi, Kim and Cho 2020Choi, Jiyoun, Sahyang Kim, and Taehong Cho 2020 “An Apparent-Time Study of an Ongoing Sound Change in Seoul Korean: A Prosodic Account”. Plos One 15 (10): e0240682. Choi, Jiyoun, Sahyang Kim, and Taehong Cho 2020 “An Apparent-Time Study of an Ongoing Sound Change in Seoul Korean: A Prosodic Account”. Plos One 15 (10): e0240682. ; Fougeron and Keating 1996Fougeron, Cécile, and Patricia A. Keating 1996 “Articulatory Strengthening in Prosodic Domain-Initial Position”. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 61–87.Fougeron, Cécile, and Patricia A. Keating 1996 “Articulatory Strengthening in Prosodic Domain-Initial Position”. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 61–87.; H.-Y. Lee 1990Lee, Ho-Young 1990 Kwukewunyullon [Korean Prosody]. Seoul: Hankwukyenkwuwen [Korean Study Institute].Lee, Ho-Young 1990 Kwukewunyullon [Korean Prosody]. Seoul: Hankwukyenkwuwen [Korean Study Institute].; T.-S. Lee, Park and Kim 2005Lee, Tae-Seung, Mikyong Park, and Tae-Soo Kim 2005 “Toward More Reliable Emotion Recognition of Vocal Sentences by Emphasizing Information of Korean Ending Boundary Tones”. In Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference. Lee, Tae-Seung, Mikyong Park, and Tae-Soo Kim 2005 “Toward More Reliable Emotion Recognition of Vocal Sentences by Emphasizing Information of Korean Ending Boundary Tones”. In Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference. ). We looked at whether participants changed the sound of their voice on these IP-initial and IP-final APs depending on whether they were talking to the friend or the professor according to thirteen different phonetic characteristics (see below).

The second analysis focused on the final syllable of each IP, the equivalent of the -yo ending in the example above. We examined IP-final syllables separately since they contain boundary tones and lengthening and represent a rich site for pragmatic marking (Jeon 2015Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. Jeon, Hae-Sung 2015 “Prosody”. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics, edited by Lucien Brown, and Jaehoon Yeon, 41–58. Malden, MA: Wiley. ; H. R. S. Kim 2010Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie 2010 “A High Boundary Tone as a Resource for a Social Action: The Korean Sentence-Ender–Ta”. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11): 3055–77. Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie 2010 “A High Boundary Tone as a Resource for a Social Action: The Korean Sentence-Ender–Ta”. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11): 3055–77. ; Park 2012Park, Mee-Jeong 2012 The Meaning of Korean Prosodic Boundary Tones. Brill.Park, Mee-Jeong 2012 The Meaning of Korean Prosodic Boundary Tones. Brill.). Here too we looked at whether participants changed their speech depending on the identity of the interlocutor according to the thirteen different measurements.

The thirteen different phonetic characteristics that we measured were all ones noted in previous research to differ according to the contrast between deferential and casual speech in Korean and other languages (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ; Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ; Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ). Using Praat version 6.0.35 (Boersma and Weenik 2017Boersma, Paul, and David Weenik 2017 “Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer”. https://​www​.fon​.hum​.uva​.nl​/praat/Boersma, Paul, and David Weenik 2017 “Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer”. https://​www​.fon​.hum​.uva​.nl​/praat/), the median, minimum, maximum fundamental frequency (Hz) and intensity (dB) as well as SD of F0 and intensity were measured across IP-initial APs, IP-final APs, and IP-final syllables. We also measured speech duration (log-transformed), as well as local shimmer (variability in amplitude, dB), local jitter (variability in frequency, %), H1-H2 (breathiness, dB) and harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR: a measure of noise in the voice signal, dB).

In order to assess whether speakers changed these phonetic characteristics depending on whether they were addressing the professor or the friend, we used Linear Mixed-Effects Models with packages lme4 version 1.1.13 (Bates et al. 2015Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker, and Steve Walker 2015 “Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using Lme4”. Journal of Statistical Software 67 (1): 1–48. Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker, and Steve Walker 2015 “Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using Lme4”. Journal of Statistical Software 67 (1): 1–48. ) and afex 0.16.1 (Singmann et al. 2015Singmann, Henrik, Ben Bolker, Jake Westfall, Frederik Aust, and Mattan S. Ben-Shachar 2015 “Afex: Analysis of Factorial Experiments”. R Package Version 0.13–145.Singmann, Henrik, Ben Bolker, Jake Westfall, Frederik Aust, and Mattan S. Ben-Shachar 2015 “Afex: Analysis of Factorial Experiments”. R Package Version 0.13–145.) for the analyses. Different models were used for the analysis of IP-initial and IP-final APs, and for the IP-final syllables. The model for APs included Politeness (deferential versus casual), Gender (female versus male), Task (conversation versus map) and Location (IP-initial versus final) as fixed effects predictors as well as the interaction effects of Politeness by Gender, Task, and Position. By-subject and by-item varying intercepts and by-subject random slopes for Politeness condition were included as Random effects: Acoustic features ~ Politeness * (Gender + Task + Location) + (1 + Politeness|Subject) + (1|Item). The model for IP-final syllables included Politeness, Gender and Task as fixed effects predictors as well as the interaction effects of Politeness by Gender and Task. As random effects, we had intercepts for subject and syllable as well as by-subject random slopes for the effect of Politeness: Acoustic features ~ Politeness * (Gender + Task) + (1 + Politeness|Subject) + (1|Item). P-values were obtained by likelihood ratio tests for the models.

4.1IP-Initial versus IP-final Accentual Phrases (AP)

Here we primarily focus on the significant effects of Politeness (i.e., deferential versus casual), and its interactions with other factors, namely the Task (conversation versus map), Position of the AP (IP-initial versus IP-final) and Gender. Table 1 summarizes the significant main effects of Politeness and the interactions with Location and Task (features with no main effect of Politeness or significant interactions are not shown). None of the interactions with Gender were reliable and therefore are not included in the table.

For more detailed results, readers are referred to the Appendices. Appendix 1 shows raw mean values for phonetic features of APs by Politeness and Task, and Appendix 2 shows raw mean values of APs by Politeness and Location.

For median pitch, there was a significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 3.99, p < 0.046), Task (χ ²(1) = 13.44, p < 0.001), Location (χ ²(1) = 315.15, p < 0.001) and a significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 4.01, p = 0.045). On average, pitch was 7.1 Hz (p = 0.05) lower in deferential speech and the difference was significant only in the conversation task. Compared to casual speech, deferential speech was 11 Hz lower (p = 0.04) in the conversation task and 3 Hz lower (p = 0.8) in the map task. Location did not interact with politeness but median pitch was significantly higher (37 Hz, p < .0001) in initial compared to final position. Interestingly, minimum pitch showed a significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 20.46, p < .001): Speakers produced significantly lower minimum pitch (about 15 Hz, p = 0.02) for deferential speech only in the conversation task.

Median intensity (loudness) showed a significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 4.73, p = 0.03), Task (χ ²(1) = 13.98, p < 0.001) and Location (χ ²(1) = 292.2, p < 0.001). Politeness showed a significant interaction with Task (χ ²(1) = 70.09, p < 0.001). On average, intensity was 8.8 dB higher in deferential speech than in casual. The difference was substantially larger only in the conversation task (11.8 dB, p = 0.04). This result was due to participants speaking quieter on the conversation task in casual speech (38 dB on average, compared to 43 dB on the map task), whereas intensity was more consistent over both tasks in deferential speech (51 dB on conversation task, 50 dB on map task). The initial position showed significantly higher intensity (5.5 dB, p < .001) than the final position in both tasks.

Minimum and maximum intensity also returned significant results. Minimum intensity showed a main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 5.26, p = 0.22), Task (χ ²(1) = 143.54, p < .001) and Location (χ ²(1) = 36.99, p < .001) as well as an interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 177.36, p < .001). Minimum intensity was overall greater in polite speech (about 8 dB) but only in the conversation task (p = 0.023). The minimum intensity was 25 dB in both tasks for casual speech but increased to 31 dB in the map task and 38 dB in the conversation task for deferential speech.

Similarly, maximum intensity returned a main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 4.54, p = 0.33), Location (χ ²(1) = 271.52, p < .001) and an interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 106.25, p < .001). Maximum intensity was significantly greater (8.9 dB) for deferential speech but only in the conversation task (p = 0.05). Compared to the map task, maximum intensity in the conversation task for casual speech was significantly lower (3.5 dB, p < .0001), whereas maximum intensity for deferential speech was significantly higher (2.3 dB, p < .0001). For both minimum and maximum intensity, initial APs were produced with greater intensity than final ones (p < .001).

Intensity variability showed no effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 0.10, p = 0.748) but there was a significant Politeness and Task interaction (χ ²(1) = 20.87, p < 0.001). There was a reverse effect on the two tasks for deferential speech: the conversation task showed smaller variability (0.44 dB, p = 0.27), whereas the map task showed greater variability (0.31 dB, p = 0.53).

Regarding voice quality, jitter (irregularities in pitch) showed no significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 4.22, p = 0.04), but there was a significant interaction between Politeness and Location (χ ²(1) = 6.44, p = 0.011). Jitter was higher for deferential compared to casual speech but only in final position (0.00149, p = 0.04), meaning that deferential speech was rougher.

For shimmer (irregularities in loudness), there was also no significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 0.57, p = 0.451), but a significant main effect of Task (χ ²(1) = 124.49, p < .001) and Location (χ ²(1) = 105.03, p < .001) as well as a significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 8.54, p = 0.003). Whereas shimmer was higher (rougher) for deferential speech in the conversation task (p = 0.04), it was lower (smoother) in the map task (p < 0.001).

H1-H2 (breathy versus creaky voicing) returned no significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 1.40, p = 0.236) but a significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 24.74, p < 0.001). The conversation task exhibited not significant but lower H1-H2 values (0.12 dB, p = 0.84) and the map task substantially higher values for deferential speech (1.56 dB, p = 0.03). Deferential speech was breathier, but only in the map task.

For duration, there was no main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 0.29, p = 0.591). A significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 11.25, p < .001) indicated that Politeness had the opposite effect on AP duration depending on the task. Duration was longer in the conversation task for deferential speech (0.02 log units) but shorter in the map task (0.03 log-transformed units). Politeness also significantly interacted with Location (χ ²(1) = 4.87, p = 0.027). Duration was significantly longer in final position only for deferential speech in both tasks (p = .0001).

We also examined whether the overall duration of IPs varied as a function of Politeness, Gender and Task. Deferential IPs were significantly longer than casual IPs (χ ²(1) = 32.88, p < 0.001). There was also a significant Politeness and Task interaction (χ ²(1) = 7.46, p < .0001). Speakers produced significantly longer IPs in the map task (0.31 log-transformed units) compared to the conversation (0.15 log-transformed units, p = .0001).

In summary, our results show a complex picture of how politeness is marked acoustically in Korean interactional data. Main effects were found for pitch and intensity (including minimum and maximum intensity), with deferential speech being lower pitched and louder. Whereas the result for pitch is consistent with previous studies (Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ; Idemaru et al. 2020Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, Lucien Brown, and Grace Eunhae Oh 2020 “Loudness Trumps Pitch in Politeness Judgments: Evidence from Korean Deferential Speech”. Language and Speech 63 (1): 123–48. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, Lucien Brown, and Grace Eunhae Oh 2020 “Loudness Trumps Pitch in Politeness Judgments: Evidence from Korean Deferential Speech”. Language and Speech 63 (1): 123–48. ; Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), the result for intensity (deferential speech = louder) is the opposite. Voice quality measures also demarcated deferential speech in some contexts: jitter was higher (i.e., rougher voice) in deferential speech in final position, whereas shimmer was higher (rougher) in the conversation, but lower (smoother) in the map task. Higher H1-H2 (breathier) characterized deferential speech in the map task. These results are also somewhat inconsistent with previous studies (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), where deferential speech was shown to be smoother and less breathy. Finally, the finding that IPs are longer in deferential speech is consistent with previous findings (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ); however, longer duration at the AP-level only occurred in the conversation task. As for the localization of the acoustic marking of deference, we see that intensity and maximum intensity are stronger in initial position, whereas jitter and duration show stronger results for final position.

There was a strong effect of Task. The map task results were more consistent with previous studies of non-interactional data (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), whereas the conversation showed divergence. It was the conversation where intensity was substantially higher in deferential speech, contrasting with previous studies. Similarly, shimmer was higher in deferential speech in the conversation (but lower in the map task), meaning that deferential speech sounded rougher, also different to previous findings.

4.2IP-final syllables

We separately examined IP-final syllables. As these are known to be rich sites for pragmatic meanings, the assumption was that these syllables might contain enhanced marking of politeness. The main effect of Politeness and its significant interactions with either Task and Gender are reported in Table 2 (features with no main effect or significant interactions are not shown).

For IP-final syllables, the only pitch-related measure that showed significant results was pitch variability (SD). There was no main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 0.27, p = 0.602), but there was a significant Politeness and Gender interaction (χ ²(1) = 12.99, p < 0.001). The interaction was due to distinct and opposing patterns of pitch variability according to gender. Overall, female speakers varied their pitch more than male speakers in both conditions (deferential and casual), but they show more variability in deferential speech (5.07 Hz, p = 0.019). Conversely, male speakers show less pitch variability, particularly in deferential speech (6.3 Hz, p = 0.002). Male speakers somewhat suppressed pitch variation and produced more monotonous final syllables to convey politeness, whereas females used more variable and lively pitch variation. The consistency of these patterns across the participants is illustrated in Figure 1.

Intensity (loudness) returned no significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 0.05, p = 0.818). However, there was a significant main effect of Task (χ ²(1) = 66.19, p < 0.001) and a significant interaction between Politeness and Task (χ ²(1) = 91.90, p < 0.001). In the conversation task, intensity was on average 16 dB higher (p = 0.2) for deferential speech. In contrast, for the map task, intensity was significantly lower (23 dB, p = 0.04).

The only voice quality measure to return a significant result was H1-H2. There was a significant main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 5, p = 0.025), suggesting that deferential speech sounds breathier. There was also a significant Politeness and Task interaction (χ ²(1) = 8.43, p = 0.004) whereby the effect was more robust in the map task.

IP-final syllables are known to contain significant lengthening, and we found that the duration of these lengthened syllables was used to mark politeness. For syllable duration there was a main effect of Politeness (χ ²(1) = 4.71, p = 0.03), Gender (χ ²(1) = 7.27, p = 0.007) and Task (χ ²(1) = 4.74, p = 0.29). Final syllables were significantly shorter in deferential speech than in casual speech (0.06 log-transformed units, p = 0.04). Duration was significantly shorter in the map task than the conversation task (0.025 units, p = 0.03) and males produced shorter final syllables than females (0.07 units, p = 0.009).

In sum, IP-final syllables have different phonetic qualities in deferential and casual speech, but only according a small subset of the features. The significant results that we received, however, appear particularly meaningful to our understanding of the acoustic properties of deferential speech. To date, studies of deferential speech for Korean (Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ) and other languages (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ; Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ) have tended to show that it has lower pitch and is more monotonous overall, with few gender differences. But our analysis of IP-final syllables show that female speakers are behaving differently to male speakers and using increased pitch variation as a strategy for performing deference. Also, duration of IP-final syllables is shorter in deferential speech, especially for men. Lengthening of the final syllable in Korean is known to occur in emotionally-charged speech (M. Kim 2018Kim, Minju 2018 “From Connective to Final Particle: Korean Tunci “Or” and Cross-Linguistic Comparisons”. Journal of Pragmatics 135: 24–38. Kim, Minju 2018 “From Connective to Final Particle: Korean Tunci “Or” and Cross-Linguistic Comparisons”. Journal of Pragmatics 1351: 24–38. ) and also to be negatively valenced (Jeon 2014Jeon, Hae-Sung 2014 “The Perception of Korean Boundary Tones by First and Second Language Speakers”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody, edited by Nick Campbell, Dafyd Gibbon, and Daniel Hirst, 954–58. Jeon, Hae-Sung 2014 “The Perception of Korean Boundary Tones by First and Second Language Speakers”. In Proceedings Speech Prosody, edited by Nick Campbell, Dafyd Gibbon, and Daniel Hirst, 954–58. ), and thus speakers seem to use more emotionally-controlled shorter final syllables in deferential speech. As with the analysis for APs, the results for the map task are more similar to those reported in previous studies on non-interactional data (Hübscher, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2017Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 65: 145–59. Hübscher, Iris, Joan Borràs-Comes, and Pilar Prieto 2017 “Prosodic Attenuation Characterizes Formal Register in Catalan Requests”. Journal of Phonetics 651: 145–59. ; Idemaru, Winter and Brown 2019Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. Idemaru, Kaori, Bodo Winter, and Lucien Brown 2019 “Cross-Cultural Multimodal Politeness: The Phonetics of Japanese Deferential Speech in Comparison to Korean”. Intercultural Pragmatics 16 (5): 517–55. ; Winter and Grawunder 2012Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. Winter, Bodo, and Sven Grawunder 2012 “The Phonetic Profile of Korean Formal and Informal Speech Registers”. Journal of Phonetics 40 (6): 808–15. ), whereas the conversation produced more divergence.