Purpose: "Analogy" is the similarity of different concepts on which a comparison can be based. Recently, an analogy of "waves at sea" was shown to be effective in modulating fundamental frequency (F[subscript 0]) variation. Perceptions of intonation were not examined, as the primary aim of the work was to determine whether analogy instruction had a negative impact on other parameters of the speech signal compared with explicit instruction. The purpose of this study was (a) to determine whether changes in the standard deviation of F[subscript 0], acoustically, resulted in similar changes in the perception of pitch variability and (b) to determine the perceptual influence of analogy vs. explicit instructions on speech naturalness, loudness, and rate. Method: Ten speech-language pathologists were asked to listen to and rate pitch variation, speech naturalness, loudness, and rate for 74 Cantonese speech samples using a visual analogue scale, which allowed raters to indicate their subjective perceptions of each parameter. Results: It is revealed that listeners perceived pitch variation to be greater and speech to be more natural in analogy-instructed, rather than explicitly instructed, speech. No differences were perceived for ratings of speech loudness or speech rate. Conclusion: It is concluded that analogy instruction has a less negative impact on the naturalness of speech than explicit instruction and may provide a better method by which to manipulate desired pitch variation. (Contains 3 figures.)