What makes business speakers sound charismatic? A contrastive acoustic-melodic analysis of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg

Phonetic research on the prosodic sources of perceived charisma has taken a big step towards making a speaker’s tone-of-voice a tangible, quantifiable, and trainable matter. However, the tone-of-voice includes a complex bundle of acoustic features, and a lot of parameters have not even been looked a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Niebuhr, Oliver, Brem, Alexander, Michalsky, Jan, Neitsch, Jana
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:Brasil
Institución:Associação Brasileira de Linguística (ABRALIN)
Repositorio:Cadernos de Linguística
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs3.cadernos.abralin.org:article/272
Acceso en línea:https://cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/cadernos/article/view/272
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Persuasión
Carisma
Discurso
Análisis Acústico
Fonética
Prosodia
Steve Jobs
Mark Zuckerberg
Inglés
Persuasion
Charisma
Speech
Acoustic Analysis
Phonetics
Prosody
English
Descripción
Sumario:Phonetic research on the prosodic sources of perceived charisma has taken a big step towards making a speaker’s tone-of-voice a tangible, quantifiable, and trainable matter. However, the tone-of-voice includes a complex bundle of acoustic features, and a lot of parameters have not even been looked at so far. Moreover, all previous studies focused on political or religious leaders and left aside the large field of managers and CEOs in the world of business. These are the two research gaps addressed in the present study. An acoustic analysis of about 1,350 prosodic phrases from keynotes given by a more charismatic CEO (Steve Jobs) and a less charismatic CEO (Mark Zuckerberg) suggests that the same tone-of-voice settings that make political or religious leaders sound more charismatic also work for business speakers. In addition, results point to further charisma-relevant acoustic parameters related to rhythm, emphasis, pausing, and voice quality - as well as to audience type as a significant context factor. The findings are discussed with respect to implications for future perception-oriented studies and perspectives for a computer-based measurement, assessment, and training of a charismatic tone of voice.