Research conducted by the Chair of Speech Communication aims to provide a theoretical foundation for oral communication, experimental research, and practical application. This is reflected in the expansion of our current work in impact research, particularly speech effects research. Our primary research objective here is describing young and old voices as well as investigating the vocal expression of general personality traits and researching speaking styles in radio and television to analyze how emotions are expressed through voice and way of speaking. In cooperation with Audeering and T-Labs, we pursue projects focusing on optimizing human-machine interactions as well as on audiovisual language synthesis.
The main objective of this research focus is to comprehensively understand the structural characteristics of human language in everyday communication, its cognitive and social functions, variance, development in acquisition and change, and its processing; this is a precondition for the experimental exploration and practical application of explanatory theories.