Perceptual competence and persuasiveness: L1 and L2 compared

This research aims at analysing the perception of prosodic features in learners of L2 Italian, from a comparative perspective with L1 Italian. In particular, we chose spontaneous argumentative speech, which implies the perlocutionary act of convincing, in order to investigate the relationship between the degree of persuasiveness of a speaker and the prosodic features characterizing her/his speech, in relation to the perceptual competence of non-native learners.
A corpus of argumentative speech in L1 and L2 Italian has been collected. For the corpus in L1, 8 Italians, divided into two groups, were asked to take part in a debate and argue for or against a specific topic. The aim was to convince an audience of 19 Italians, who evaluated the persuasiveness of each speaker, judging it as "positive" or "negative". For the corpus in L2 Italian, we carried out the same procedure with 10 Chinese learners of Italian, who argued (5 pros, 5 cons) in front of an audience made up of 8 Chinese people. The data obtained are significant because they show not only that there is a relationship between persuasiveness and prosodic features, but that this relationship is strongly influenced by the perceptual competence of the listeners.