With the advent of multimedia multichannel era, voice performers secured a firm position as a professional broadcasting communicator, beyond a mere agent of message delivery. An identical message receives varying levels of acceptance depending upon wh...
With the advent of multimedia multichannel era, voice performers secured a firm position as a professional broadcasting communicator, beyond a mere agent of message delivery. An identical message receives varying levels of acceptance depending upon who delivers it. Exising studies define source credibility as an audiences perception of sender, which in turn determines message effects.
Starting with a discussion of status and roles of voice performers, this study continues elaborating on paralanguage. With such conception in mind, this study purports to delineate the relationship among paralanguage, message reception, and the perception of source credibility. The focus was given on the effects of accuracy of pronunciation, intonation, speech rate, pause, and expression of emotion. As such, the following two research questions were formulated:
1. How does the usage of paralanguage affect the message reception?
2. How does the usage of paralanguage affect the perception of source credibility?
To answer the research questions, repeated-treatment design quasi-experiments were administered. Additionally, interviews with highly experienced voice performers in the field were carried out. Such statistical methos as factor analysis, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, multiple regression, and correlation analysis were employed.
As to Research Question 1, 5 components of paralanguage(accuracy of pronunciation, intonation, speech rate, pause, and expression of emotion) all affected comprehension of and involvement in messages. Respondents assigned to the 'well-performed' experimental condition showed a significantly higher level of message reception than respondents assigned to the 'poor-performed' conditions.
In the frame of overall message reception process, understanding was affected more by the usage of paralanguage than involvement. In particular, accuracy of pronunciation and speech rate turned out the strongest predictors of message understanding.
Regression analysis also showed that speech rate(β=0.253) and accuracy of pronunciation(β=0.231) were better predictors of message comprehension than other paralinguistic components, while expression of emotions(β=0.338) was the strongest predictor of message involvement. This result showed that, to induce the utmost message involvement from audience, performers need to incur emotion to the maximum degree.
As to Research Question 2, factor analysis revealed the three-factor(expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism) solution of the source credibility, conforming to the previous research findings. Five components of paralanguage(accuracy of pronunciation, intonation, speech rate, pause, and expression of emotion) all affected the perception of expertise, trustworthiness, and dynamism. Among the three dimensions of source credibility, trustworthiness was the most affected by paralanguistic variables. Among the 5 components of paralanguage, expression of emotion was the strongest predictor of source credibility.
In sum, expression of emotion was by far the strongest in terms of affecting the perception of source credibility, while the effects of speech rate and pause were minimal. These results emphasize the unique contribution of voice performers who are proficient in the expression of emotion compared to the broadcasting performers in other career tracks. Also, professional broadcasting communicators need to pursue perfection in expressing a variety of emotional states in addition to commanding the most proper levels of the accuracy of pronunciation, speech rate, intonation, and pause.
Considering the contemporary trend of emphasizing one's communication competence, this study has its own value. This study reminds us of the importance of the proper usage of paralanguage particularly in the context of Korean communication culture where the Confucius influences still occupy a larger portion.