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The Perception of Emotional Prosody in English by Chinese L2 Learners

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
© 2025 by SSRG - IJHSS Journal
Volume 12 Issue 6
Year of Publication : 2025
Authors : Liu Kaipeng, Wu Ling
10.14445/23942703/IJHSS-V12I6P105
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How to Cite?

Liu Kaipeng, Wu Ling, "The Perception of Emotional Prosody in English by Chinese L2 Learners," SSRG International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, vol. 12,  no. 6, pp. 48-57, 2025. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/23942703/IJHSS-V12I6P105

Abstract:

As Chinese culture globalizes, cross-cultural communication between Chinese students and English speakers has grown increasingly vital. However, the mechanisms underlying emotional encoding and decoding among Chinese L2 learners—particularly college students—in such interactions remain underexplored. Guided by the Auto-segmental Metrical (AM) model, this study investigates how language proficiency, gender, and emotion types influence Chinese English learners’ ability to perceive emotional prosody. Behavioral experimentation was conducted using E-Prime to measure perceptual accuracy, SPSS for two-way ANOVA, and Praat to analyze acoustic features of four target emotions. Three core research questions were addressed: 1) Does language proficiency affect perceptual performance? 2) Does gender impact recognition outcomes? 3) Do emotion types influence perceptual accuracy? Key findings reveal that: 1) Learners with higher CET-4 scores demonstrated marginally higher accuracy, though the difference was not statistically significant; 2) Gender exerted no notable effect on perception; 3) Neutral emotion was the easiest to distinguish, followed by sadness, with fear proving the most challenging. Neutrality vs. sadness and fear vs. sadness emerged as the most confusing pairs, with learners showing weak differentiation between these categories—potentially attributed to L1 prosodic transfer. This study contributes to the field of emotional prosody research and offers practical implications for L2 English teaching.

Keywords:

Chinese L2 learners, Emotional prosody perception, Gender, Language proficiency, Types of emotions.

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