Prosodic Cues and Intercultural Communication Competence in English and French

Dilton Serra , Márcia Polaczek

Intercultural Communication Studies ›› 2026, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (1) : 7

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Intercultural Communication Studies ›› 2026, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (1) :7 DOI: 10.53941/ics.2026.100007
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Prosodic Cues and Intercultural Communication Competence in English and French
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Abstract

This paper aims at discussing the influence of prosodic factors in the perception of English and French. Two experimental studies were conducted at doctoral level in order to investigate how prosody can influence perception and comprehension in foreign languages. To achieve the goals, perception tests were applied. The first study investigated the perception of English cognate words lexical stress by Brazilian Portuguese (hereinafter BP) native speakers who learn English as a second language (hereafter L2). The second study investigated the participation of prosodic clues as disambiguating elements of utterances spoken in French. The results showed that a set of prosodic clues were related to the perception of English and French, suggesting that prosody interacts with other linguistic levels, playing an important role in the perception and comprehension of linguistic information. The findings may be of interest and also contribute to intercultural communication (IC) studies that focus on L2 teaching.

Keywords

prosody / speech perception in L2 / acoustic cues

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Dilton Serra, Márcia Polaczek. Prosodic Cues and Intercultural Communication Competence in English and French. Intercultural Communication Studies, 2026, 35 (1) : 7 DOI:10.53941/ics.2026.100007

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