The Dynamics of Speech in Conversation: Insights from Language Science Research
By Catherine Pham and Jordan Hansen
As a speaker of at least one language, you probably already know that everyday language use is often interactive, since you use language to engage with others. But did you know that language use is also dynamic, and that when speaking to other people we often adjust our own speech? In language science research, this dynamic aspect of speech is called speaker adaptation. Researchers working in this area have learned lots of interesting things about how people adjust their vocabulary, communication style, and other aspects of their speech to suit the needs and preferences of their conversation partners. Being able to adjust your speech in this way is actually a crucial aspect of effective communication in that it helps to establish rapport, convey a message, and facilitate smooth communication. As language researchers, we find this dynamic aspect of speech in conversation both fascinating and challenging to study! This research summary discusses some of the things we have learned about speaker adaptation, and why it matters so much in communication.
Feedback matters
Humans possess a remarkable ability to adapt their speech based on feedback that they’re getting from their conversation partners [1]. Speakers rely on a variety of signals or cues to understand how well their message is being received by their listener. These cues can include things like facial expressions, head nods, or verbal responses like “uh huh” or “I see.” Signals like these help people know whether they are effectively getting their point across, or if they need to make adjustments to their speech to ensure better understanding.
The role of conversational context
There are lots of cues to let people know whether they need to make adjustments, but how do people know what kinds of adjustments to make? One factor that influences how people adjust their speech is the context they’re speaking in. For instance, people may adopt a more formal style of speaking when giving a presentation at work and a more informal style of speaking in casual conversations with friends. People may also adapt their speech depending on the physical environment they’re in. For example, when speaking in noisy environments, people will often speak louder and more slowly [8,9]. While these kinds of adjustments may seem obvious to some, it’s actually pretty amazing that people are able to do this so naturally given all of the other things they need to keep track of during a conversation.
Conversational mind reading
Another factor that influences how people adjust their speech is who they’re talking to. For instance, when telling a story about what you did over the weekend, whether or not you refer to someone as “my brother Peter” or “Peter” depends on how much shared information you have with your conversation partner. How well does this person know you? Do they already know that you have a brother named Peter? Do they know more than one Peter? Depending on who you’re speaking to, it might be necessary to provide more context, and failure to provide that context could potentially lead to miscommunication. People are constantly applying what they know about how conversations typically work and keeping in mind what their conversation partner might already know when deciding what to say next. We often don’t realize that our ability to communicate depends to a certain extent on our ability to read our conversation partner’s mind, but in some sense we are doing this all the time during conversation–again, a pretty ordinary yet amazing everyday feat!
Linguistic chameleons
Have you ever noticed yourself adopting someone else’s “accent” or speaking style? This is another really interesting area of speaker adaptation, where people pick up sound patterns, vocabulary, and other aspects of the speech of the person they’re talking to. This is perhaps most obvious when looking at how kids often talk like their peers, teachers, or parents–you may have even noticed yourself using the word “doggie” when talking to a little kid, but “dog” when talking to another adult. But some research has shown that this kind of adaptation can even happen in the course of a single conversation between two adult strangers [2,3]! People may adapt their word choice, their sound patterns, or even the kinds of grammatical structures they are using based on what they are hearing from their conversation partner. For example, if a person who usually uses active sentences like “the dog chased the cat” is talking to someone who frequently uses passives like “the cat was chased by the dog”, they might start using more passives themselves [6,7]. What this shows is that we align ourselves with our conversation partners, usually without even realizing we’re doing it.
A hopeful outlook: the considerate nature of conversations
In this article we have discussed just a few of the many ways that speakers are making subtle but observable and oftentimes very useful adjustments to their speech during conversation. Looking across the research in this area, one interesting idea that emerges is that, whether they realize it or not, most people are naturally very considerate in conversation—indeed, conversation depends on this. The fact that people adapt their speech to suit a conversation partner’s needs—such as a child’s need for certain basic words, or a language learner’s need for slower speech [4,5] might even be viewed as a unique sort of empathy and consideration. People do this regularly, often unconsciously, and it is standard practice in everyday conversation. As language scientists we find this both inspiring and quite mysterious. We are still discovering new ways that people are adapting their speech during conversation, and trying to explain and better understand this simple yet remarkable aspect of human language.
References
[1] Clark, Herbert H., and Gregory L. Murphy. “Audience design in meaning and reference.” In Advances in psychology, vol. 9, pp. 287-299. North-Holland, 1982.
[2] Hwang, J., Brennan, S. E., and Huffman, M. K. “Phonetic adaptation in non-native spoken dialogue: Effects of priming and audience design,” Journal of Memory and Language, 81, (2015), 72–90.
[3] Pardo, Jennifer S. “On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119, no. 4 (2006): 2382–2393.
[4] Cai, Zhenguang G., Zhuying Sun, and Nan Zhao. “Interlocutor modelling in lexical alignment: The role of linguistic competence.” Journal of Memory and Language 121 (2021): 104278.
[5] Suffill, Ellise, Timea Kutasi, Martin J. Pickering, and Holly P. Branigan. “Lexical alignment is affected by addressee but not speaker nativeness.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24, no. 4 (2021): 746-757. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000092
[6] Branigan, Holly P., Martin J. Pickering, and Alexandra A. Cleland. “Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue.” Cognition 75, no. 2 (2000): B13-B25. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00081-5
[7] Schoot, Lotte, Evelien Heyselaar, Peter Hagoort, and Katrien Segaert. “Does syntactic alignment effectively influence how speakers are perceived by their conversation partner?.” PloS one 11, no. 4 (2016): e0153521.
[8] Kemper, Susan, Ruth E. Herman, and Cindy HT Lian. “The costs of doing two things at once for young and older adults: Talking while walking, finger tapping, and ignoring speech of noise.” Psychology and Aging 18, no. 2 (2003): 181. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.18.2.181
[9] Harmon, Tyson G., Christopher Dromey, Brenna Nelson, and Kacy Chapman. “Effects of background noise on speech and language in young adults.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 64, no. 4 (2021): 1104-1116. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00376