Expressivity and Prosody

Abstract This chapter examines the expression of emotions in multimodal communication, emphasizing the use of prosodic cues while also considering facial expressions and gestures. Although the exact mapping between emotions, prosodic acoustics, and gestures is far from clear, research on this topic has attracted considerable attention and has made great progress in recent decades, employing both monolingual and multilingual perspectives. The first part provides a review of the acquisition of emotional prosody. It shows that although humans are sensitive to emotional prosodic cues from birth, the full acquisition of emotional prosodic recognition is a gradual process that continues into adulthood and develops alongside social competences. The second part explores how auditory and visual signals are produced, recognized, and integrated as communicative modalities of emotional speech. Finally, the chapter outlines the major challenges in the emotional prosody field and suggests ways to overcome them.