#PRAAT SCRIPT PROFESSIONAL#

Finally, we correlated the speakers’ (i) Gesture rate (ii) Pitch Variation Quotient (iii) Mean pitch value (iv) Speech rate with the ratings of the evaluation test. The subjects rated both the degree of speakers’ involvement and their professionalism on a 1-to-5 point scale. The test was administered online through Google forms. This included three conditions (i) muted video (MV) (ii) audio only (AO) (iii) audio+video (AV). The effects on the audience of the variability in the reporters’ voice and gestures were tested with an evaluation test. Speech rate, i.e., number of syllables/second, was also calculated using a script by De Jong and Wempe (2009). A measure of mean pitch was also calculated (mean pitch values were z-transformed separately for men and women, respectively, before inclusion in the analyses). The degree of speakers’ variation in pitch during the reports was measured using the Pitch Variation Quotient (Hincks, 2005) that is a calculation of the standard deviation of the fundamental frequency (F0) of the speakers’ voices divided by the mean. 2011).The pitch of the speakers’ voices was analysed with Praat. Annotations were created on beats and representational gestures gesture rate was calculated (Ngestures/Nword*100, following Smithson et al. The reporters’ gestures and body movements were annotated with Elan.

The news reports are in Italian and taken from three nation-wide channels: Skytg24, Rainews24, RaiTV. The corpus consists of 2110-seconds videos of news reports on floodings occurred in Italy around November 2014.

#PRAAT SCRIPT PROFESSIONAL#

The hypothesis is that reporters’ involvement is signalled by a higher gesture rate and greater pitch variation as compared to less involved, more professional reporting style. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is a relation between speakers’ gesture rate, pitch variation and emotional involvement.

emotional involvement through their body gestures and voice.

This is crucial for preventing panic to spread in the audience. For professional reasons, they are required to take a neutral stance and appear detached from the event they are reporting. In reporting on emergency situations (i.e., floodings, hurricanes) reporters must inform the audience about the event and provide details about how the event took place.

Praat script