Paralanguage refers to the
non-verbal elements of
communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed
consciously or
unconsciously, and it includes the
pitch,
volume, and, in some cases,
intonation of
speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to
vocally-produced sounds. The study of paralanguage is known as
paralinguistics.
The term ’paralanguage’ is sometimes used as a cover term for body language, which is not necessarily tied to speech, and paralinguistic phenomena in speech. The latter are phenomena that can be observed in speech (Saussure's parole) but that do not belong to the arbitrary conventional code of language (Saussure's langue).
The paralinguistic properties of speech play an important role in human speech communication. There are no utterances or speech signals that lack paralinguistic properties, since speech requires the presence of a voice that can be modulated. This voice must have some properties, and all the properties of a voice as such are paralinguistic. However, the distinction linguistic vs. paralinguistic applies not only to speech but to writing and sign language as well, and it is not bound to any sensory modality. Even vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen (lip reading, McGurk effect), and even felt, e.g. by the Tadoma method.
One can distinguish the following aspects of speech signals and perceived utterances
