The Non-Verbal Communication of Santiago Abascal, President of VOX

This article analyzes Santiago Abascal’s non-verbal communication, exploring the development of his communication skills, thus adding to heretofore limited research on non-verbal expression and political communication by providing empirical evidence from the field. Content analysis has been carried out on the basis of a quantitative systematization of non-verbal communication, encompassing kinesic, prosodic and proxemic aspects. The corpus of study comprises 24 audiovisual documents, representative examples of Abascal’s public communication actions between the years 2014 and 2021, to which a tailormade frame of reference has been applied. Our findings show that Abascal’s communication skills have progressed and improved during that time period, and may now be defined as evincing notable intra-systemic and inter-systemic coherence in verbal, kinesic and paralinguistic language, which enables more effective and persuasive communication; a clear, precise and constant gestural style that amplifies the persuasive impact of his discourse; the use of consistent expressive signals interpreted by his audience as markers of credibility; and a mode of non-verbal expression that is emphatic and vehement, which underpins the meaning of the message, enables emotional connection, and fosters effective communication as a form of spectacle. The conclusion drawn here is that the Abascal’s development in expressive communication may be one contributing factor, among others, that has led to the rise of his political party, VOX.Este artículo estudia la comunicación no verbal de Santiago Abascal y examina la evolución de sus competencias comunicativas, contribuyendo así al avance de las escasas investigaciones sobre comunicación no verbal y comunicación política, y proporcionando evidencia empírica al respecto. Se ha realizado un análisis de contenido a partir de la sistematización cuantitativa del comportamiento no verbal, atendiendo a los elementos kinésicos, prosódicos y proxémicos. El corpus de análisis está constituido por 24 documentos audiovisuales, representativos de sus intervenciones públicas entre 2014 y 2021, a los que se aplica una ficha elaborada ad hoc. Los resultados muestran una evolución y mejora en las competencias comunicativas de Abascal, actualmente caracterizadas por: una destacable coherencia intrasistémica e intersistémica del lenguaje verbal, kinésico y paralingüístico, que favorece la comunicación eficaz y persuasiva; un estilo gestual claro, preciso y poco variado potenciador del efecto suasorio del discurso; el uso de constantes señales expresivas decodificadas por el receptor como indicios de credibilidad; y una expresión no verbal enfática y vehemente, que facilita el sentido del mensaje, la conexión emocional y promueve la comunicación espectacular y efectiva. Se concluye que la evolución expresiva del líder político ha podido favorecer, junto con otros factores, el ascenso de la formación política

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

Towards responsive Sensitive Artificial Listeners

This paper describes work in the recently started project SEMAINE, which aims to build a set of Sensitive Artificial Listeners – conversational agents designed to sustain an interaction with a human user despite limited verbal skills, through robust recognition and generation of non-verbal behaviour in real-time, both when the agent is speaking and listening. We report on data collection and on the design of a system architecture in view of real-time responsiveness

The listening talker: A review of human and algorithmic context-induced modifications of speech

International audienceSpeech output technology is finding widespread application, including in scenarios where intelligibility might be compromised - at least for some listeners - by adverse conditions. Unlike most current algorithms, talkers continually adapt their speech patterns as a response to the immediate context of spoken communication, where the type of interlocutor and the environment are the dominant situational factors influencing speech production. Observations of talker behaviour can motivate the design of more robust speech output algorithms. Starting with a listener-oriented categorisation of possible goals for speech modification, this review article summarises the extensive set of behavioural findings related to human speech modification, identifies which factors appear to be beneficial, and goes on to examine previous computational attempts to improve intelligibility in noise. The review concludes by tabulating 46 speech modifications, many of which have yet to be perceptually or algorithmically evaluated. Consequently, the review provides a roadmap for future work in improving the robustness of speech output

A VOWEL-STRESS EMOTIONAL SPEECH ANALYSIS METHOD

The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. This paper documents the development of a vowel-stress analysis framework for emotional speech, which is intended to provide suitable assessment of the assets obtained in terms of their prosodic attributes. The consideration of different levels of vowel-stress provides means by which the salient points of a signal may be analysed in terms of their overall priority to the listener. The prosodic attributes of these events can thus be assessed in terms of their overall significance, in an effort to provide a means of categorising the acoustic correlates of emotional speech. The use of vowel-stress is performed in conjunction with the definition of pitch and intensity contours, alongside other micro-prosodic information relating to voice quality