기쁨과 슬픔 화행에서 보이는 ‘글쎄’의 음성학적 양상

초록

This study aims to find phonetic features of the Korean word “Geulsse,” or “well” in English, involved in a rejecting speech act. Geulsse can be used for both positive and negative responses. Thus, we conducted this research based on one assumption: if a speaker’s emotional states are expressed by saying Geulsse, his or her utterance’s phonetic features are significantly noticeable for accurate message delivery. To this end, we experimented to identify the phonetic characteristics emanating from different emotional states with 20 students, male and female, from Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province. The findings were meaningful. Speakers in a joyful mood spoke more quickly at a higher tone while others in a sad mood talked more slowly at a lower tone. The pitch type of the last syllable of Geulsse was higher for delightful speeches whereas lower for the sorrowful ones. As for the speech length, both males and females showed the shortest one for neutral speech acts, longer for unhappy speech acts, and the longest for happy speech acts. We also tested a gap between the highest and lowest intonations in each emotional status by gender. The female group showed the most significant intonation gap for pleasure while the male group for displeasure. As a result, we found out how individuals articulated the same sentence differently depending on their emotions and how phonetic traits were demonstrated when they verbalized the same expressions in different emotional states, leading to multiple interpretations of the words.

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