Embodying Energy: Correlating Pitch and Gestures in Improvisational Performances of Social Personae — The Association Specialists
  1. Schedule
  2. SESSION 5: Language, culture, and socialization B
  3. Embodying Energy: Correlating Pitch and Gestures in Improvisational Performances of Social Personae

Embodying Energy: Correlating Pitch and Gestures in Improvisational Performances of Social Personae (20009)

Parker Scarpa 1
  1. Linguistics, Reed College, Portland, OR, United States

This project investigates embodiment as a stylistic practice in improvisational performances of social personae through a quantitative analysis of pitch and gesture. Under the framework of the indexical field, the social meaning of a variable is argued to be underspecified, drawing from a field of possible meanings to take on specificity within a particular social context (Eckert 2008). Under this framework, studies such as D’Onofrio (2018) have identified the social persona as an effective vehicle through which to study these context-specific social meanings because of its ability to efficiently represent a complex, ideologically-ingrained stylistic package. Furthermore, recent studies have examined the relationship between embodied practices and stylistic variation, arguing that the configuration of the body itself affects the meaning of a variable (Pratt 2018; Calder 2019). However, little work has applied this embodied approach to the framework of the indexical field within the context of the social persona.

I contribute data from an experimental study in which two participants were instructed to read from short passages while performing impressions of five social personae: Business Professional, Fitness Instructor, Surfer, Valley Girl, and Yoga Teacher. 

My analysis correlates the participants’ use of manual gesture and pitch. Pitch measurements were extracted from each performance and categorized according to the gesture being performed at the moment of utterance.

Linear regression modeling identifies a main effect of gesture on pitch, suggesting that the simultaneous recruitment of pitch and gesture conveys social meanings beyond those attributable to the persona.

While pitch is indexically linked to gender identity, it takes on new meaning alongside embodied actions, such that the simultaneous recruitment of pitch and gesture is iconically linked to ideologies of bodily energy (Esposito & Gratton 2022). Crucially, this embodied approach gives greater insight into the social meaning of variation within the framework of the indexical field.

  1. Calder, J. (2019). The fierceness of fronted /s/: Linguistic rhematization through visual transformation. Language in Society, 48(1), 31–64.
  2. D’Onofrio, A. (2018). Personae and phonetic detail in sociolinguistic signs. Language in Society, 47(4), 513–539.
  3. Esposito, L., & Gratton, C. (2022). Prosody and ideologies of embodiment: Variation in the use of pitch and articulation rate among fitness instructors. Language in Society, 51(2), 211–236.
  4. Pratt, T. (2018). Affective Sociolinguistic Style: An Ethnography of Embodied Linguistic Variation in an Arts High School [Stanford University].