Prosody

Prosody is the paraverbal area of communication. Prosodic features, like pitch, tempo, loudness, tone, stress and intonation, are directly related to other areas of organization, for example the structuring of information.

Prosody encompasses nonlinguistic, linguistic and paralinguistic features.

Examples:

1. nonlinguistic feature: voice quality, reveals the nature of the speakers larynx and vocal tract.
2. linguistic features: stress, tone
3. paralinguistic features: style of speech

Both areas of communication, gestures and prosody are complements of speech and they used to "produce a pattern of action that will accomplish the representation of meaning". ([Kendon 1983])

Links between the two areas (prosodic features and gestures) apply to very few items. The most obvious ones are:

1. rising pitch - rising head
2. rising tones - lifting eyebrow, lifting hands etc.

These observations suggest that rising tones and rising/lifting gestures mark an increase of tension, falling tones and lowering gestures mark a decrease in tension. ([Cruttenden 1986])