Paralinguistic expressions of respect in spoken interaction: a cross-cultural study of Uzbek, Japanese, and American English

This cross-cultural experiment compares the performance and reception of prosody, timing, and voice quality expressing respect across English, Uzbek, and Japanese. Based on recent research on encoding politeness and language-specific cue weightings, we propose that respectful speech will exhibit reduced intensity, a slower tempo/more extended silences, as well as systematic changes in voice quality. Additionally, we suggest that these cues will have non-uniform distributions across languages. Acoustic analyses of production data from adult native speakers on formal and informal tasks, as well as complementary perception tasks to estimate in-group and out-group interpretation, are conducted. The results indicate convergence in timing adjustments between the groups. However, fragmentation in cue weightings (e.g. intensity/duration plays a more salient role in JP/UZ than U.S. English), with predictable cross-cultural misperceptions. I address the implications of theories of rapport management and the impact of the (im)politeness reciprocity principle, offering practical insights for intercultural training. This study contributes to the expanding literature on the acoustics of (im)politicness, which now includes Uzbek examples, and jointly models the production and perception in a single study design.