Extra-Linguistic Information Contents of the Signal

Abstract

Communication systems may carry, in addition to the semantic contents of the message, certain items of information automatically encoded by the sender and perceived and analyzed more or less passively by the receiver. When the medium is speech, we find ten such items, which might be called extrinsic. They give clues to

• 1) The species.

• 2) The geographical origin at two levels or more (English, Southern British, East End Cockney; in French, France, Southern, Narbonne region as opposed to Marseilles or Bordeaux). This permits linking the sender with a social group, geographically defined (dialect).

• 3) Sex.

• 4) Relative age (three main classes).

• 5) Physiopathologic state (hoarse, asthmatic, Parkinsonian, nervous, lethargic, etc.).

• 6) State of mind.

• 7) Identity (individual characteristics).

• 8) Localization in space (direction, distance).

• 9) Culture (through choice of elements and their organization, respect of rules of association (syntax) with reference to a statistical standard called colloquial speech).

• 10) Aesthetics, admittedly a vague notion connected with culture but also with mood, social group, what might be called “good manners”.