Vocal Behaviour: The Duration of Speech Units

Recordings made of 20 subjects in two role-playing sessions were analyzed to obtain the pattern of the durations of speech units for both the subjects and for the standard-role-player. Overall curves of the distribution of durations did not reveal marked differences between the two role-playing sessions. The distribution was then divided into four parts in order to discover which portions might vary with the three dimensions of situation, speaker, and listener. The data are interpreted in terms of the proportion of very short utterances as providing feedback and reinforcement from the listener, the proportion of long utterances as related to relatively stable characteristics of the speaker, and those of intermediate length as showing an interaction of speaker and situation.