Emotions in dubbed speech: An in respect to F

A comparative intercultural study on the so-called basic emotions anger, joy, fear, and sadness as well as neutral utterances was carried out based on samples of dubbed speech. The languages studied were the American English original of a popular TV series (Ally McBeal) as well as its German and Japanese dubbings. The production by the main male and female characters in all three languages as well as the perception by American, German and Japanese listener groups were examined. The present contribution focuses on results on the production and perception side of F0 and related parameters. The principal findings indicate that there are major cultural differences and also gender differences in encoding and decoding the emotional content of the utterances studied. Differences were found to be larger between linguistically and culturally less related languages than between the more closely related ones.