Liesbet Bormans
PhD student

Speech and Hearing Sciences
Queen Margaret University
E-mail

PhD Research

A Cross linguistic study of voice quality in monolingual and bilingual speakers of Flemish and French

For my PhD. I am looking into voice quality and how voice quality differs between different languages. During my research project I also try to find out if the quality of a person’s voice is affected by emotion. Voice quality is evaluated perceptually and acoustically in monolingual and bilingual speakers of Flemish and French.

This work is original in the sense that it is the first to investigate emotional language markers in Flemish – French monolinguals and bilinguals. In addition, the emotional language markers analysed in this research project are hardly investigated in emotionally loaded speech.

Secondly, very few previous experiments have been carried out to compare voice quality cross-linguistically using both objective (acoustical analysis) and subjective (perceptual analysis) measurements.
Even more importantly, there are no voice quality baselines available for the Flemish - French population in Brussels, which is officially bilingual. Therefore, the results of this research project will be used to establish baseline setting for the bilingual population in Belgium. Speech and Language Therapists (S&LT’s) in and around Brussels will have a better idea of what to expect for “normal” voice quality after the investigation of a bilingual patient. In addition, speech and language therapists will have baselines for what can be expected after voice therapy when treating bilingual patients.

As well as providing baseline information, the speech materials developed for this study will be valuable for S&LT’s during assessment and vocal therapy for monolingual or bilingual (Flemish–French) voice patients. It can be used as a real working tool during the management of voice patients in Flemish – French bilingual areas.

For this reason, the project is of a great importance for the bilingual population in Belgium and the findings may have implications for many other language groups.

Supervisory team: Dr Janet Beck, Dr Ineke Mennen