Speaker
Description
Do speakers from different organizations sound systematically different? Using the COMPASS corpus of more than 500 L2 English business presentations from 18 companies across 10 industry sectors, we analyzed 28 acoustic-prosodic features of speaking style. Linear discriminant analyses and MANOVA reveal clear non-random clustering of prosodic patterns. Both company membership and industry-sector influence speaking style, but company-level effects are consistently stronger. Tempo, vocal effort, formants, and pausing are the most influential company predictors, particularly in organizations where employees interact frequently in stable teams or social-service contexts, while pitch variation becomes more relevant at the sector level, particularly in communication-intensive professions.