ABSTRACT
The tone-of-voice in which a message is delivered provides a major aspect of the meaning the listener extracts from it, conveying (or betraying) speakers’ moods, emotions, how they feel about the interlocutor and about the situation. Tone-of-voice may ‘match’ the text of the spoken message, reinforcing its textual meaning, or it may mismatch in a variety of ways, a resource we exploit for humor, irony,
and numerous other effects. It adds the subtle affective nuances which endow spoken language with its richly human qualities.
