Paralinguistic Study

This thesis gives a brief talk on the relationship between paralanguage and language: first, from the origin and development, paralanguage appeared earlier but developed more slowly than language; second, from the participation and cooperation, successfully social communication rely on the combination of paralanguage and language; third, from the expression and effect, paralanguage plays an important role in the meaning as well as language itself during the course of communication. Then, according to the same feature of paralanguage, the author analyzes it from four aspects: physiological voice qualities (voice quality, pitch); prosodic features (length, loudness, stress, speed and intonation); voice alternants (pause and silence); and differentiators (laugh). The conclusion is that there is a close relationship between paralanguage and language because of its influences to the expression and meaning. Therefore, the research in the paralinguistic theory is very necessary and significant.