Language and Prosody
Language is a laterized function, which means it is under the control of one or other side of the brain (left hemisphere).
Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area is a part of our left hemisphere that receive input from auditory cortex: responsible for understanding semantic content of language.
On the right hemisphere, there is an area at the back opposite of Wernicke’s area responsible for understanding not the words but its meaning or the “prosody”.
What is prosody? It understands the meaning beyond our words. Say for example
I say to my dog, “you are a good dog” or I say “you are such a bad dog”.
To my dog, those two statements are the same thing. The dog hears my intonation and the same words can have different meanings. The same actual semantic word can have different meanings. Prosody can reveal an underlying intent that a semantic word does not speak to and it can be done by changing the timbre or the tone of our voice or changing the frequency or loudness of our speech.
Originally published at http://carlosabiera.com.
