L’acquisizione delle emozioni nell’italiano non-nativo. Un percorso didattico longitudinale

This study explored the expression and the perception of vocal emotions in L2 learners of Italian (Russians and Iranians). We hypothesized that these might experience some difficulties in expressing and recognizing vocal emotions (due to cultural and linguistic distance from Italian). The research goal was to test the effectiveness of a training aiming at encouraging L2 learners’ awareness of the non-verbal aspects of emotional speech, in order to improve their perception and production of emotional stimuli in Italian. The training lasted four week and involved the learners in different activities (listening to vocal emotions expressed by native speakers of Italian, exercises focused on para-verbal communication, role plays, and shadowing). The effectiveness of the training was tested through an acoustic analysis of learners’ productions (before and after) and two different perception tests; the first aimed at testing learners’ ability to decode vocal emotions in Italian; the second, administered to a sample of Italian listeners, aimed at testing learners’ improvement in expressing vocal emotions. Results revealed that, after the training, both groups of learners improved their ability to encode and decode emotional stimuli in Italian.