The article is retracted 11 of June 2020

1. Introduction

In a ground-breaking publication ‘Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues’, Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesan (Ekman, Friesan, 1975) describe their own studies of the relationship between emotions and facial expressions, along with the conclusions of their research. They answer questions such as: “How many emotions are there? What are their facial clues? Are emotions universal or have a cultural background?” Ekman and Friesan are pioneers in terms of research on the universality of emotions [earlier studies were arbitrary and subjective (Knapp Hall, 2000: 416)]. The conclusions they have drawn constitute a datum for the given paper, whose objective is to present how useful achievements from the field and psychology of emotions are in the practice of British English vowels pronunciation. One of the first attempted experiments ​​by Ekman and Friesan was conducted in a closed lab. Students from the USA and Japan took part in it. The students were given a piece of stress-inducing film to watch, while their facial expressions were recorded on a videotape during the session. Japanese students tended to repress their expressions more than U.S. students. However, regardless of intensity, both groups revealed the same expressions as indications of emotions triggered by a bit of film. Ekman and Friesan distinguished six of these emotions: happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, anger and disgust.  Each of these emotions has their representation observed in facial clues. The clues are[1]:                       

– happiness – crow’s feet wrinkled, pushed up cheeks, movements from muscles that orbits the eye;                                                                                 – fear – eyebrows raised and pulled together, raised upper eyelids, tensed lower eyelids, lips slightly stretched horizontally back to ears;                                   – surprise – eyebrows raised, eyes widened, mouth open;                           – sadness – dropping upper eyelids, losing focus in the eyes, slight pulling down of lip corners;                                                                                        – anger – eyebrows down and together, eyes glare, narrowing of the lips; – disgust – nose wrinkling, upper lip raised.                                          The pictures of facial expressions found in the reference only stand for exemplary pictures of emotions. It is palpable that they can be expanded in a number of ways in terms of intensity of the movement and position of facial muscles; on one hand there might be an overreaction and exaggeration of expressions, on the other hand they might to be suppressed and barely noticeable. Thus only the clearest (the most “moderate”) illustrations of facial expressions are displayed in the course of the research. Having a “completed” set of emotions, Ekman and Friesan started showing pictures of facial expressions to a greater audience. They expanded the group of informants to include individuals from countries such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil. It turned out that (apart from a few exceptions - most likely conditioned individually) the ability to recognize emotions ranged from 90% to 100%.                                             Obviously, there was still a possibility that facial reactions to cinematographic stimuli and the ability to recognize emotions presented in the pictures might have been conditioned culturally. Ekman and Friesan wrote (Ekman, Friesan, 1975: 26):       

“All the people studied had some shared visual contact, usually not directly but through mass media. It was still possible that (…) the people might have learned (facial expressions) through movies, television, and picture magazines, what each other’s facial expressions of emotions looked like”.      

In order to resolve the dispute, the scientists sought to find a culture that seemed to be as “isolated” as possible, meaning that the culture which had a limited or no access to the media, a culture with no previous contact from “the outside world”. Such a culture was found in New Guinea, where a series of the same studies (emotional reactions to stimuli, recognizing emotions) was carried out amidst people whose interactions were mainly limited to interpersonal ones. Conclusions from those studies confirmed what had already been assumed and gave conclusive proof: emotions are universal regardless of culture (emotions are atavistic) and have their corresponding facial expressions. Forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks and chin which are combined with other facial muscles make the total of 54. Facial muscles form unique, yet universal expressions as emotional reactions to specific stimuli. Ekman and Friesan distinguished six basic emotions (Ekman, Friesan, 1975). In the 80’s Ekman set a series of further tests to explore those primary emotions. As a result, he introduced the notion of secondary emotions (derivations), that is to say emotions triggered by primary ones. Ekman expands both of them in 'Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotions’ (Ekman, 1986) and in ‘The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions’ (Ekman, Davidson, 1994). Due to a vast number of emotions cited in the literature and their intricate nature, only certain emotions are used for the purpose of the research presented subsequently.

The purpose of the present research is to examine how conscious manipulation of facial expressions aids acquisition of foreign vowels by learners, regardless of their native language and the culture they have been brought up in. This paper is organized as follows: in section 2 physicality of vowels and different vowel systems of Persian and British English is introduced. In section 3 the survey description, results and discussions are presented. Sections 4, 5 and 6 include comments on emotional approach and conclusions.

2. Physicality of Vowels                                                                          There are plenty of textbooks on teaching English pronunciation, e.g.: Komorowska (Komorowska, 2005: 136-145), Harmer (Harmer, 2001: 183-197), Scrivener (Scrivener 2005: 284-297) or Kelly (Kelly, 2000).  Much as the authors strive to put the methodology of phonetics into practice, apart from a few exercises on rhythm or intonation, their approach boils down mainly to a mental process. Underhill believes that constitutes a crucial problem (Underhill, 2012). As he makes his claim, learners need to “make pronunciation physical, visible, audible! Move it out of their head and make it a physical process. While grammar and vocabulary may somehow take place ‘in the head’, pronunciation is the physical aspect of language, it manifests through the body” (Underhill, 2012).

It is somewhat obvious that state schools may not offer a sufficient amount of time for this particular component in regular foreign language classes (Komorowska, 2005: 136) (Harmer, 2001: 183). Nevertheless, at universities, particularly in philology and language faculties, given the resources of space and time, it is vital to make students aware that if they aim at achieving correct British English pronunciation, they have to activate the whole body, which means to make a connection between the muscles and the brain. To account for the statement, especially in terms of understanding British English vowels, Underhill proposes an exercise. He tells the course participants to first pronounce /i:/, then /u:/, paying attention to the movement of the articulators. When producing /i:/, the lips are stretched, the tip of the tongue is closer to the teeth, during /u:/ the tip of the tongue moves backwards, towards the throat and the lips are formed in a solid round. The author of the article recommends a similar exercise, with the sounds /i:/ and /ɑ:/. Again, the principle governing the task is not only to observe the muscular changes, but to feel them. Putting the tip of the index finger to the tip of the tongue is vital in this case. With /i:/ the lips are stretched and the tip of the tongue goes in the direction of the teeth. With /ɑ:/ the jaw drops, mouth opens, the tongue moves towards the oesophagus. The author chooses these two sounds on purpose. Firstly, they do not have their Persian equivalents. Secondly, there is a tremendous difference in terms of movement within the area of the oral cavity between the production of British English and Persian vowels. Taking into account the cardinal vowel diagram (Fig.1), pronunciation of a Persian set, that is to say of /i/ and /a/ causes the articulators to cover a smaller distance and to put less effort by the speaker than pronunciation of  English  /i:/ and /ɑ:/[2].

Comparing the Persian vowel system with that of English reveals some significant differences in the following two areas: 1) The number of vowels and 2) Tense / lax distinctions. In the English vowel system, there are 15 different vowels identified, which include several diphthongs such as /aw /,/ay/, and /oy/. On the other hand, Persian has only 6 vowels in its vowel inventory, a system quite common among many natural languages in the world (Kenworthy, 1987). Although the number of vowels that can be identified in English and Persian can differ depending on different analysis of linguists or phoneticians, it is obvious that there are considerably more vowels in English than in Persian(see figure 2). Another characteristic that typically differentiates the English vowel system from the Persian vowel system is whether there exists the distinction between lax and tense vowels in either of the two system .The differentiation between tense and lax is made according to how much muscle tension or movement in mouth is involved in producing vowels (Ladefoged, 1982). Thus, vowels produced with extra muscle tension are called tense, and vowels produced without that much tension are called lax vowels. For example, /i/ as in English /it/ "eat" is categorized as a tense vowel as the lips are spread (muscular tension in the mouth) and the tongue moves toward the root of the mouth. On the other hand, /I/ as in English " it " is considered to be a lax vowel as there is little movement of the tongue or muscular tension of the lips involved in its production, compared to the manner in which the tense vowel /i/ as in " eat " is produced.

The tense/ lax vowels pairs of English do not exist in the vowel system of Persian as there is no tense/lax differentiation. It should be noted, however, that although long vowels of Persian are sometimes analysed as having the same quality as English tense vowels, this claim is difficult to support,because those vowels of Persian are not always contrastive in nature as English tense /lax vowel pairs (Bakhtiarvand, 2005). What is more,is that if the habit of uttering British English vowels in a Persian way continues, it may lead to greater errors that are difficult to correct in time. Thus, it is mandatory for non-English learners to “accept the fact that they must abandon their native habit” (Sobkowiak 2004: 210) and incorporate a new one. The method presented in this paper is a suggestion of how exactly vowels of foreign languages can be elicited by taking advantage of an emotional approach.

3. Facial Expressions in British English Vowels Acquisition

This section of the article contains the findings of a survey carried out with 57 second- and third-year Persian students of English Translation. The attempt was made to find universal emotions and facial expressions that would correlate with vowels occurring in a specific culture. The research is something that has grown from the author’s own classroom experience. It is also a suggestion of how teaching sounds of a foreign language can be performed in a phonetic laboratory. It is hoped to receive further and thoughtful consideration.

3.1 Survey Description

Prior to conducting the survey, the notions of basic emotions and secondary emotions were introduced to the students. During a series of short lectures, the students were familiarized with the foundations of emotions. They learnt six basic emotions and what their facial expressions look like. Accordingly, they could strive to grasp the way further emotions are derived, and what changes it triggers in the facial muscles. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time it was impossible to check students’ newly gained skills and knowledge. Thus, a presumption had to be made that the informants assimilated the material displayed in classes only to a certain. Luckily, it was compensated for by students’ life experience and background knowledge related to emotions.       Next, the choice of emotions for the survey was made by the teacher. It was not coincidental and it was determined by two factors. First, the emotions were carefully selected based on the teacher’s observation of the students in a phonetic class so as to choose emotions that seemed to be most frequently used by the learners, but would not be repeated in the survey, either; it allowed respondents to understand better facial expression differences. Second, the author aimed at evoking as many positive emotions as possible to create a comfortable and aided learning class atmosphere, for which the motive is explained in another section. For the purpose of this part of the experiment, the author recommends an exercise developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky. However hilarious or sometimes stressful the experience of the learners might be, the author and students’ classroom practice indicate the accuracy and effectiveness of this method [in literature described as Stanislavsky Method (Chekhov, 2009)]. The goal of the task is simply to recall a past memory or imagine a situation that is highly emotional for the learners. It helps to utter a sound accompanying the emotional state, that is to say the sound which is only seemingly coincidental for a non-English learner. For instance, in the case of /ɑ:/, it is suggested to imagine or recall a thought of being taken aback by a situation or an entity. It helps to induce a specific emotion (in this case the emotion of surprise) and consequently stimulates lower facial muscles, along with other speech organs, to form a relevant expression corresponding to a specific British English vowel; the tongue retracts and the lips become fully round due to jaw dropping. Lastly, the participants were asked to respond to a set of pictures (Fig.3.1-3.12) presenting facial expressions of emotions in order to state what kind of British English vowels (Fig. 4.1-4.6) they see in them.

Fig. 3Facial expressions.