When Audiences Become Performers and Speech Becomes Music: New Tools to Analyze Speech, Song, and Participation in Chinese Crosstalk

Abstract

As a presentational performance in which two actors perform a scripted dialogue that includes several short vocal selections, Chinese crosstalk features animated exchanges between the actors while also inviting enthusiastic involvement from the audience in the form of cheering applause. Inspired by research on the musicality of spoken bouts between same-sex friends (Hawkins, 2014; Robledo Del Canto et al., 2016; Cross et al., 2016) the present study focuses on two selections in a crosstalk performance—looking at not only the vocal interactions between the actors, but also those between the actors and the audience. Using ELAN, a tool for analysis of video and audio, Praat acoustic analysis software, and R statistical software, the study reveals (1) long durations of audience responses, signifying the seminal importance of the audience as a third performing agent in Chinese crosstalk, (2) significant portions of the performance that demonstrate rhythmic entrainment between performers and audience members, and (3) highly significant examples of approximate pitch matching between the ending sounds of utterances and the initial sounds of subsequent responses in the final selection of the performance.