Updated August 18, 2014.
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.
We normally think of things like tone, rhythm, and pitch as being concepts unique to music. However, people use all of these things almost without thinking about it in everyday conversation. Prosody is the way we change our vocal inflections, rhythm, emphasis and tone while speaking in order to convey additional layers of meaning to the literal words that are said. For example, the phrase “she is clever” can be said emphatically, sarcastically, or even as a question, all by changing the way the sentence is said.
Prosody is generally thought to be generated and understood by the part of the brain just opposite of the areas that manage words. In most people, this is the right half of the brain.
While we don’t usually think about prosody on a day-to-day basis, its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. Most people listen to the tone of what is said even more closely than the words themselves. If the sentence “isn’t that nice” is said with a sarcastic tone, most people will ignore the literal content of the sentence and gather that the exact opposite thing is meant. Much of an actor’s ability to move an audience depends on their individual interpretation of just how the written lines should be spoken.
Certain disorders like autism can limit someone’s ability to understand certain aspects of prosody, which can impair their interactions with others. This is known as aprosodia. In some forms of frontotemporal dementia, the hemisphere of the brain responsible for comprehending prosody degenerates more than the other hemisphere.
Strokes or traumatic brain injury can sometimes have the same effect.
Because we don’t often think about prosody in day-to-day speech, it can be difficult to notice when this ability has been lost. Instead, people may complain that someone isn’t connecting as well with them, or that they seem flat or depressed. In reality, the person may not be able to convey or understand certain aspects of emotional language as well as they used to. Furthermore, testing for aprosodia is not commonly part of neurological examinations, so the symptom may be missed even by experienced practitioners.
It is important for family members to remember that people with aprosodia may still have a strong interest in what their loved ones are telling them, but may not fully understand the emotional content of the words that would normally be conveyed through prosody. People with aprosodia may therefore appear “disconnected” during conversations.
Similarly, if the patient cannot convey emotions through prosody, they may seem flat and unemotional even when discussing something very important to them. Family members may misinterpret this as disinterest, or even as depression, whereas really the patient feels normal. On the other hand, if the patient is actually quite upset, they may still sound unemotional, in which case the severity of their stress may be underestimated. Extra care must be taken to specify how the patient feels, and no assumptions must be made based off things that we normally take for granted, like the tone of someone’s voice.
Sources:
Elliott D Ross. “Affective Prosody and the Aprosodias.” Principles of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, 2nd edition, Ed. M. Marcel Mesulam, Oxford University Press 2000, pp 316-331
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.
We normally think of things like tone, rhythm, and pitch as being concepts unique to music. However, people use all of these things almost without thinking about it in everyday conversation. Prosody is the way we change our vocal inflections, rhythm, emphasis and tone while speaking in order to convey additional layers of meaning to the literal words that are said. For example, the phrase “she is clever” can be said emphatically, sarcastically, or even as a question, all by changing the way the sentence is said.
Prosody is generally thought to be generated and understood by the part of the brain just opposite of the areas that manage words. In most people, this is the right half of the brain.
While we don’t usually think about prosody on a day-to-day basis, its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. Most people listen to the tone of what is said even more closely than the words themselves. If the sentence “isn’t that nice” is said with a sarcastic tone, most people will ignore the literal content of the sentence and gather that the exact opposite thing is meant. Much of an actor’s ability to move an audience depends on their individual interpretation of just how the written lines should be spoken.
Certain disorders like autism can limit someone’s ability to understand certain aspects of prosody, which can impair their interactions with others. This is known as aprosodia. In some forms of frontotemporal dementia, the hemisphere of the brain responsible for comprehending prosody degenerates more than the other hemisphere.
Strokes or traumatic brain injury can sometimes have the same effect.
Because we don’t often think about prosody in day-to-day speech, it can be difficult to notice when this ability has been lost. Instead, people may complain that someone isn’t connecting as well with them, or that they seem flat or depressed. In reality, the person may not be able to convey or understand certain aspects of emotional language as well as they used to. Furthermore, testing for aprosodia is not commonly part of neurological examinations, so the symptom may be missed even by experienced practitioners.
It is important for family members to remember that people with aprosodia may still have a strong interest in what their loved ones are telling them, but may not fully understand the emotional content of the words that would normally be conveyed through prosody. People with aprosodia may therefore appear “disconnected” during conversations.
Similarly, if the patient cannot convey emotions through prosody, they may seem flat and unemotional even when discussing something very important to them. Family members may misinterpret this as disinterest, or even as depression, whereas really the patient feels normal. On the other hand, if the patient is actually quite upset, they may still sound unemotional, in which case the severity of their stress may be underestimated. Extra care must be taken to specify how the patient feels, and no assumptions must be made based off things that we normally take for granted, like the tone of someone’s voice.
Sources:
Elliott D Ross. “Affective Prosody and the Aprosodias.” Principles of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, 2nd edition, Ed. M. Marcel Mesulam, Oxford University Press 2000, pp 316-331
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