It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia's busy Chinatown. Outside of a little grocery store, a group of middle-aged Chinese women is absorbed in a lively discussion. Their high-pitched loud voices and staccato rhythm attract the attention of a blond five-year-old kid passing by with his mother. “Mommy, why are the ladies arguing?” inquires the child. I do not hear her answer and can only hope she will explain that the ladies may not be arguing at all and that in other languages loud voices and high pitch do not necessarily signal anger. But is this in fact common knowledge? What do we really know about ways in which vocal cues signal affective meanings across languages and cultures? Some respondents to our webquestionnaire, like Marianne, believe that at least some cues are universal and all you need to do to get your anger across is to shout. So is it possible that the ladies are arguing after all?

The purpose of this chapter is to triangulate evidence from different fields of inquiry on how vocal cues function to signal emotions and on how people interpret affective meanings of vocal cues in a second or unfamiliar language.