Language serves not only to exchange information, but also to convey emotions, to achieve things (Austin, 1975) and/or to improve our relations with other humans. Being able to express our emotions and to perceive the emotions of others contributes to our own physical and mental well-being, to the harmonious development of society and to promoting the coexistence of citizens from different cultures living together in the same community (Fussell, 2002).

We all feel emotions such as joy and sadness regardless of the language we speak and the culture we live in, but we do not express them in the same way. Scholars point to the coexistence of universality and cultural specificity in the recognition of cross-cultural emotions (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002a, 2002b). However, recent studies emphasize the clear differences between the expression of emotions in different languages. Therefore, many foreign language speakers without sufficient sociopragmatic competence are unable to communicate their emotions in a foreign language (Dewaele, 2016). Prosody, facial expressions,

and gestures are very important when trying to convey emotions in all languages. However, specific prosodic strategies vary considerably in different languages, making it difficult for foreign language speakers to interpret and express emotions in foreign languages (Lorette and Dewaele, 2022).

Studies have shown that several important acoustic features such as fundamental frequency (hereafter F0), duration, intensity (Hidalgo, 2020; Martínez and Rojas, 2011), or voice quality such as falsetto voice, broken voice, breathy voice (Padilla, 2020), as well as melodic contour (Carbajal-Carrera, 2020; Garrido, 2011; Garrido et al., 2012; Garrido and Chica, 2018; Hidalgo, 2020; Rodero, 2011) are associated with L1 Spanish emotional speech.

Rodero (2011) conducted a study with the hypothesis that emotion identification in L1 Spanish is more affected by melodic contour than by the F0 level. For this purpose, four Spanish male actors were recorded reading and simulating the emotion assigned to them. Each actor was assigned an emotion (joy, sadness, calm and anxiety) and, following the instructions of the researcher, they modified only the F0 level and the type of melodic contour. Later, a perception study was conducted with 100 students (46 males and 54 females). The study showed that, regarding the identification of emotions such as joy and sadness, the type of melodic contour proved to be a more significant parameter than the F0 level.

Garrido (2011) also concluded that the melodic contour was a relevant cue in the identification of emotions in L1 Spanish. A corpus of simulated emotional speech was analyzed for this study. 4,201 emotional and 1,658 neutral utterances produced by two professional native Spanish speakers (male and female) simulating emotions were recorded. Specifically, according to his results the use of the ascending descending circumflex toneme was more frequently observed in the expression of the emotion of happiness, while its presence was lower in the expression of sadness. A year later, Garrido et al. (2012) stated that descending melodic contours are associated with sadness.

To describe the specific melodic characteristics of emotional intonation in Spanish, Hidalgo Navarro (2020) analyzed three colloquial conversations to study how L1 Spanish speakers express happiness, sadness, anger, fear and surprise, and compared them with neutral utterances as a reference. For this purpose, three monolingual (Spanish) women of medium-high sociocultural level and ages between 25 and 45 years were selected. The results showed that the melodic contours of the expression of joy and sadness are very different. The melodic contours of joy were characterized by having the circumflex melodic curve with a circumflex or descending or suspended toneme, while melodic patterns of sadness presented a flat melodic curve with a suspended toneme.

The results of these studies suggest that the melodic contour is a key component in L1 Spanish when trying to convey the emotional attitude and mood of the speaker (Hidalgo Navarro, 2019). However, Mandarin Chinese is a tone language in which melody may not play as important a role as in Spanish when it comes to expressing emotions. In Mandarin Chinese, lexical tone is critical in communicating the meaning of words. When conveying emotions or attitudes, intonation is superimposed on lexical tone, and is achieved by extending or contracting the tonal range without altering the lexical meaning of the words (Cao, 1933; Cao, 2009; Wu, 1996). In other words, intonation in Mandarin Chinese is constrained by lexical tone (Wang and Lee, 2014) and the expression of joy and sadness is not merely presented through a rising, falling, or suspended final inflection.

According to Chen (2007), for example, the declarative intonation serves as the foundation for all other intonations. Based on the declarative intonation, a sentence can change from being declarative to being exclamatory by just increasing or decreasing the tonal range. Emotional intonation is characterized by Chen (2007) as having a high F0, a long duration, a fullness of pitch contour, a wide tonal range, and a low final inflection. Emotional intonation has been classified by Chen (2007) into the following categories: high F0 and wide tonal range for anger; high F0 and narrow tonal range for surprise or panic; narrow tonal range for disgust; low F0 and wide tonal range for envy; low F0 and narrow tonal range for anxiety, etc.

As we can see, studies on emotional expressions in Chinese focus on F0 pitch and tonal range (Chen, 2007; Wang et al., 2012; Wang and Lee, 2014; Wang et al., 2018) and not on melodic contour. Moreover, several authors emphasize that in Mandarin Chinese modal particles often convey the emotional information of the messages (Dai, 2006; Ding, 1985). This leads us to conclude that the melodic contour in Mandarin Chinese may not be as significant as it is in Spanish.

Cortés Moreno (2004) points out that the phenomenon of “avoidance of the use of emphatic intonation” or the inappropriate use of intonation by L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish is the primary reason for ineffective communication with L1 Spanish speakers, which might lead to misinterpretations and even bias against them (p.106). On the other hand, Herrero (2021) in her studies on unintentional (im)politeness of L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish indicates that, when trying to convey politeness, some may be interpreted by native speakers as impolite, due to the inappropriate use of melodic contours.

Since there is a great difference regarding the use of melodic contour between Mandarin Chinese and Spanish, we consider that it may be relevant to observe whether L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish use melodic contour as a strategy to express joy and sadness in L2 Spanish. On the other hand, little research has been conducted on acted emotional speech in L2, either from a production or perceptual point of view (Pellegrino and Maffia, 2016), which may be due to the widespread acceptance of the theory that a second language is less emotional for the late learner than the L1 (Harris, 2004). Whether this emotional distance is due to the lack of emotions in the contexts in which a second language is acquired (Ivaz et al., 2016) or not, conducting this study will be useful for the teaching and acquisition of Spanish oral expression and of utmost importance to help L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish to express their emotions accurately and confidently in Spanish L2. Since the effective expression of emotions is an essential part of communication, this will ultimately facilitate their full participation in the Spanish-speaking society.

The aim of the present study is to check whether Sino speakers living in Madrid use melodic contours as a strategy for the expression of joy and sadness in L2 Spanish. To achieve this objective, the following research question is formulated:

Do L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers use melodic strategies to convey sadness and joy in L2 Spanish?

To answer our research question, we analyzed and then compared the melodic contours present in the 100 pairs of joy and sadness utterances. In 94 of the 100 pairs of utterances analyzed, different melodic contours were found to have been used to express joy and sadness in identical utterances at the lexical-grammatical level, and only in six pairs of utterances the same melodic contour was used to express joy and sadness. Table 2 illustrates an example of the different melodic contours of joy and sadness in utterance 1 “He sacado un diez” (“I got a 10”) produced by the 10 informants in the study.

As we can see in Table 2, sad speech patterns tend to be flat compared to joy speech patterns that show more melodic movements, specially at the end of the melodic contour. After observing the differences, we analyzed in detail the characteristics of each melodic contour, taking into account the different parts of the melodic contour described by Cantero (2002): anacrusis, first peak, body and final inflection.

Figures 4 and 5 illustrate an example of two melodic patterns of the same sentence produced by the same speakers with two different communicative intentions: to convey happiness (Figure 4) and to convey sadness (Figure 5).

The detailed analysis of the contour shows us that the difference in this case can be located in every part of the melodic contour. In the joy speech melodic contour, we can find an ascent to the first peak in the anacrusis, while in the sad speech melodic contour we can find no anacrusis or first peak. The body is equally different, being the joy speech pattern characterized by a descending body and the sad speech pattern by a flat body. But probably the most remarkable difference can be found in the final inflection, since we can observe a circumflex final inflection in the joy speech utterance, while the final inflection is suspended and flat in the sad version of the sentence.

In order to compare the characteristics of the patterns obtained in a more systematic way, according to the results of the Melodic Analysis of all utterances, a classification of patterns was built. In Table 3 we can observe the characteristics of each melodic pattern, the graph that represents the tonal movements, as well as the frequency of appearance of each melodic contour in our corpus of joy speech. PA stands for Patrón de Alegría (Joy Speech Pattern) and the numbers in the names of the patterns (I/II/III…) have been assigned according to the frequency of appearance of the pattern in our corpus.

As we can see, PA-I, the most frequent melodic pattern, is characterized by a circumflex body and a circumflex final inflection, and the second most frequent one is also characterized by a circumflex final inflection.

As for sad speech patterns, after conducting the melodic analysis of the utterances we found eight melodic patterns. As we can see in table 4, 45% of sadness utterances present a flat body followed by a descending FI, 10% present a flat body and a flat FI, 12% present a flat body and an ascending descending circumflex FI, 7% present anacrusis, a 1st peak, a descending body and a descending FI, 10% present anacrusis, 1st peak, descending body and a circumplex FI, in 4% the first peak coincides with the final inflection, 7% have a 1st peak, different types of bodies and a descending FI and finally 5% have flat body and an ascending FI. In Table 4 the name of each pattern is presented. PT stands for Patrón de Tristeza, which means sad speech pattern in Spanish.

As we can see, most sad speech utterances present a very flat body and a final downward inflection. This pattern is very different from the patterns presented for joy speech, which corroborates the idea that L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish use different melodic patterns when trying to convey joy and sadness. However, sometimes speakers have used the same melodic pattern to express joy and sadness in Spanish.

Only six sentences presented the same melodic contour type when different emotions were expressed. Table 5 illustrates the six cases that show no difference in melodic contour when expressing joy and sadness.

As an example, in the utterance “Está lloviendo” (“it´s raining”), both the happy-intended and the sad-intended utterances are characterized by a melodic contour with a flat body, descending ascending circumflex final inflection (see Figure 6 and Figure 7).

In the example, as we can see, the percentage of rise and fall is, as expected, higher in the utterance pronounced with the intention of communicating joy than in the one produced with the intention of conveying sadness. However, the melodic movements in both cases are the same.

The aim of the current study was to test whether L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish, who are living in Madrid, use melodic contours as a strategy for the expression of joy and sadness in L2 Spanish. For this purpose, we recorded and analyzed 100 pairs of joy and sadness speech utterances (10 utterances x 2 emotions x 10 informants).

As we have indicated in the results section, 94% of the utterance pairs have shown different melodic contours to express joy and sadness in identical utterances at the lexical-grammatical level. As an example, we can observe that in Figure 5 and Figure 6, i.e., the same utterance “Mi hija ya tiene novio”(“My daughter already has a boyfriend”), to express joy, the informant has used a melodic contour characterized by the presence of anacrusis with a 46% ascent to the first peak, descending body and descending ascending circumflex final inflection; however, to express sadness using the same utterance, the informant has opted for a melodic contour with flat body and a flat final inflection.

These results are in line with those presented by Hidalgo (2020) for L1 Spanish, who states that “the melodic contours of joy and sadness in L1 Spanish are divergent” (Hidalgo, 2020, p. 50). Specifically, the emotional expression of joy in L1 Spanish is characterized by greater tonal range, while the expression of sadness is characterized by flat melodic patterns.

After analyzing in detail each melodic pattern, we observed which patterns were frequently used by the speakers in order to express happiness. We found that the most frequently used pattern (PA-I) coincides with the joy pattern described by Hidalgo (2020). Interestingly, this pattern is the most used one also in L1 Spanish (27% of utterances trying to convey happiness in Spanish L1). Therefore, further studies are needed to check whether this pattern is perceived according to the communicative intention of the speakers when trying to convey happiness, but it could be hypothesized that, at least in this case, when speakers want to express joy they are perceived according to their communicative intention. Different is the case of sadness expression, since the melodic pattern most present in our corpus of sadness expression has not been mentioned by any of the authors who have focused on describing the melodic patterns of sadness expression in L1 Spanish.

On the other hand, out of the 100 utterances studied, we only found six pairs with the same melodic contour when trying to convey both joy and sadness in identical utterances at the lexical-grammatical level.

However, although six utterances share the same melodic contour when expressing joy and sadness, the percentage of tonal ascent of anacrusis, ascent and tonal descent of the final inflection is higher in joy speech than in sad speech, which is also in line with the results obtained by Garrido (2011), who considers that the tonal height of the expression of sadness in L1 Spanish is lower than that of happiness, since sadness has “a rather low degree of activation” (Garrido, 2011, pp. 253).

These results also allow us to speculate on the possible influence of their L1, Mandarin Chinese. Chao (1932, cited in Cao, 2013) uses the elastic effect (“elastic” effect in-depth), a metaphor, to describe Chinese emotional intonation. That is, the extension or contraction of the tonal range plays a key role in expressing emotions or attitudes in the Chinese language.

According to the results obtained, we can conclude that the productions of joy and sadness of the L1 Chinese L2 Spanish speakers residing in Madrid show differences at the melodic level, from which we deduce that melody can indeed be one of the strategies used by them when expressing emotions in L2 Spanish. To further explore this topic, in the future it would be advisable to carry out perceptual studies to evaluate whether the utterances produced by L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish with happy and sad emotional intention are perceived by native speakers of Spanish according to their communicative intention. Similarly, it would be interesting to conduct a similar study with L1 Spanish speakers to compare results and determine whether there are significant differences between the two groups of speakers.

The current study has some limitations, such as the small number of participants, the lack of gender diversity and the small number of happy and sad utterances analyzed. Therefore, future research recommends increasing the sample size to obtain more robust and generalizable results, as well as including a wider variety of emotional utterances and comparing individual variables such as Chinese variety or language proficiency level.

Expression of emotions is the most basic need in human communication. Accurate recognition of emotions and proper expression of emotions help immigrants integrate into the daily life of migrant countries and promote social stability and solidarity. It also contributes to the physical and mental health of the individual. There is little research on emotional expressions in L2 Spanish spoken by L1 Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish. Although recently (Carbajal-Carrera et al., 2020) an interest on the part of researchers and teachers has begun, there is still a need to carry out more studies to delve deeper into this topic and obtain a more complete understanding of it.

In the present study, we observed that L1 Chinese speakers who speak Spanish do seem to use melody to try to express joy or sadness in Spanish. However, in some cases the informants have used the same pattern to express joy and sadness. When analyzing the expression of joy, we have observed that the most frequent patterns are similar to those presented by previous literature in Spanish. In the case of sadness, it seems that the patterns differ quite a bit from those used by L1 Spanish speakers. It is therefore necessary in the

future to conduct perceptual studies in order to test whether Chinese speakers have problems when trying to communicate sadness to L1 Spanish speakers and, if so, whether the melody could be responsible for such a communicative error.

The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications for the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. Although perceptual studies need to be carried out to reach conclusive results, the results of the current study suggest that it is important to teach melodic patterns of emotion expression in L2 Spanish. As we know, the teaching of pronunciation and the teaching of intonation are not always present in the Spanish as a foreign language classroom. This can lead to serious communicative misunderstandings, since when expressing an emotion, we all want that emotion to be perceived. Doing so in a foreign language can be challenging, so it is necessary to incorporate this content in the foreign language classroom. To this end, specific activities focused on these aspects could be developed. Such activities could focus on recognizing the melodic patterns of the expression of emotions in Spanish L2 and on trying to reflect on the melodic features of their own productions. Of course, this work should not be carried out in isolation, but should be integrated throughout the language teaching process.

More studies in the field will allow teachers of Spanish as L2 to develop specific didactic activities that address the difficulties encountered in emotional expression in Spanish L2 by Chinese speakers. In this way, it will be possible to design more effective teaching materials and strategies adapted to the needs of Chinese speakers of L2 Spanish. This will undoubtedly make it easier for them to integrate into the host society and allow them to participate fully in the Spanish-speaking community.

In short, it is of vital importance to observe which are the linguistic features that prevent foreign language speakers and, in particular, the Chinese-speaking community based in Madrid, from communicating their emotions and feelings, so that we can finally contribute to building a more just, equitable, harmonious and truly multicultural society.