Problems of Phonostylistics

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1972.

Practical application

Comparative Phonetics

Historical Phonetics

Descriptive Phonetics

General Phonetics

Extra Info

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The word “function” is usually understood in linguistic as the role where is phonetic units play a distinguishing one word (phrase or text) from another.

The study of phonetics has educational value for everybody who is interested in process of human communication.

Theoretical significance of Phonetics is connected with further development of synchronic study and description of the phonetic system for national language, the comparative analysis of different languages and study correspondences between them. It is also connected diachronic description of changes in the phonetic system or different languages….

Practical significance is connected with teaching foreign languages. Practical phonetics is applied in Methods of speech correction, teaching deaf, knew film doubling, transliteration, radio and telephone.

1. Phonostylistics (Ph.S.) is a branch of Linguistic.

2. Extralinguistic situation.

3. Classification of intonation functional styles

4. The main differences between reading and speaking.

1.

The main forms of the language are:

- spoken

- written.

Now linguistic is primary concerned with realization of the language in speech.

As for Phonetics, it investigates the varieties of the spoken language, but the written language is also taken into consideration. So the written texts are often read aloud or recited or use for retelling.

The scholars distinguish a number of functional styles, such as:

1. Belles-lettres style;

2. Publicistic style;

3. Newspaper style;

4. Scientific prostyle;

5. The style of official documents.

Phonostylistics is a part of functional stylistic, its studies the way Phonetic means of the language, function of the language in the area of oral realization that is in oral text.

As the term suggests Ph.S. is concerned with the study of phonetic expressive means from stylistic point of view.

Functional Stylistic is a complex of different varieties of speech realized in all kinds of extralinguistic situation.

Ph.S. is a new way of looking at Phonetic phenomena, consider on them in connection with extralinguistic factors which were previously completely ignored.

2.

Extralinguistic situation can be defined by 3 components:

- purpose;

- participants;

- setting.

It means that 2 or more persons, having a particular aim of communication, speak on a particular topic in a particular place.

Purpose or subject matter.

It has been proved that the purpose of utterance affects pronunciation. A speaker may try to persuade, to teach, to instruct, to narrate etc.

The aim of the utterance makes a speaker select a number of functional phonetic means to realize the aim in more effective way. Subject matter/topic of the speech (what they talk about) determines the choice of lexical, grammatical and syntactical means.

Participants.

The following factors are important here:

- social status;

- age;

- sex;

- the emotional state of the speaker.

Social states and social roles of partners have a great importance. A certain individual who occupies a certain rang may be addressed in different ways. He/she is addressed in a certain way by subordinates, in another way by equals and in the 3d way by superiors. Social roles may be different (a father, a customer, a passenger…).

Age is also an important category. For instance, elderly people speak in another way from young people. An elderly person usually speaks in a high pitched voice. People generally use high pitch levels speaking to children.

Sex difference in pronunciation should be also taken into consideration. Women use more standard pronunciation comparing with men. Females usually pronounce the standard realisation of the verb ending “–ing” more often than males who usually pronounce “-ing” less rightly. Females tend to use certain intonation patterns that males usually don't (e.g. surprise pattern of high fall rises).

The emotional state. If you compare speech of some person when she/he is calm, sad, nervous – you'll notice much difference in pitch, tempo and loudness.

Setting or scene.

It can be defined by several features:

1. a physical orientation of participants.

While delivering a lecture, the speaker stands at some distance from the audience, whereas in a private conversation the speakers are usually closed by. So it's quit obvious that the speech of the lecture and the speech in face to face communication is phonologically different in a number of ways (a lecture speaks louder, more slowly and distinctly).

2. scenes may be arranged along the following dimensions:

- public/private

- impersonal/personal

- polite/casual

- highcultural/lowcultural

- formal/informal, etc.

There are plenty of different factors determining variations in language usage. Phoneticians are more interested in variations of phonetic means determined by situational circumstances. This problem has been given great attention and there is a lot of information obtained with the help of investigation. It allows us to single out the following factors which result in phonostylistic varieties easily identified on the perception level.

Personal zones are observed abroad strictly. They are:

1. the purpose or the aim of the utterance and the subject matter (the aim may be: to chat, to narrative, to pervade, etc.);

2. the speaker's attitude (friendly, preserved, hostile, etc.);

3. the degree of spontaneously or the degree of preparedness or the reference to the oral text to written one.

4. the form of communication: monologue, dialogue, polylogue;

5. the degree of formality.

All the above mentioned factors are into dependent and into connected.

3.

The more we examine oral speech, the more we realize that phonetic expressive means are vary greatly in accordance with different extralinguistic context.

There is a famous saying of Bernard Show that “There are 50 ways of saying “yes”, 100 ways of saying “no” and only one way to write it”.

Ph.S. is concerned in how the person talks about something, rather than what he/she speaks about. This problem plays a secondary role in Phonetics but it receives top priority consideration in Ph.S.

Ph.S. studies the way phonetic means are used in this/that particular situation determined by extralinguistic factors. The aim of PH.S. is to analyze all kinds of spoken utterance with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts.

One of the objectives of Ph.S. is the study of intonation functional styles. Different scholars name different form of styles. We follow the classification given by Sokolova Marina Alexeevna.

1. Informal style (speech/radio announcement, oral representation of any kind of information written text, formal conversation);

2. Scientific/Academic style (a lecture on a scientific subject, scientific prose);

3. Publicistic style (public discourse on a political/economic topic);

4. Familiar style – the way of everyday communication;

5. Declamatory style (reading/reciting any piece of poetry/prose).

Any of these styles has a great many varieties accordance that full set of extralinguistic factors mentioned above. Any of the phonetic styles may be realized in the form of reading or speaking.

We can not appose styles as such, we can only appose particular speech realizations belonging to particular phonetic styles and modified according to this or that extralinguistic situation.

4.

When a person reads a text, he doesn't have to think WHAT to say (because the text has been already written). He only has to think HOW to say to sound properly.

When a person speak spontaneously , he has to think of WHAT to say and HOW to say.

In other words, the speaker has to decide spontaneously what ideas he wants to express and choose an adequate linguistic form of expression.

Naturally the psyching mechanisms (process) of generating of spoken utterance are quite different. Phonetic means are also used differently.

The most important characteristics of the spoken spontaneous speech are:

- hesitation phenomena;

- a process of delimitation.

Hesitation phenomena.

While generating an utterance a speaker hasn't enough time to think the wording is taken place simultaneously with pronouncing so the speaker hesitates. As a result, there appears pauses of different length and quality which are called hesitation pauses.

Another form of hesitation phenomena is lengthening of sounds within the words and in the word final position.

Delimitation.

If a text is read aloud, pauses occur at syntactic juncture. In spontaneous speech the speaker doesn't realize the rules of phrasing, so there may be pauses in any part of the utterance.

One of the characteristic features of the spontaneous speech is usage of verbal fillers. These are words, phrases and sometimes just noises.

Spontaneous speech has false starts and hesitations. Typically a new speaker in the conversation begins by using some sort of hesitating noise (..er..ahm..) or such words as ‘well', ‘actually', etc.

Hesitation filers can be used in any part of the sentence. The main function – to fill a silence while the speaker is thinking over what he wants to say next.

It's important to note that the usage of the verbal filers in ordinary everyday conversation doesn't necessarily mean that the speaker is hesitated. The ability to keep on speaking is the mark of a fluent speaker. When report is read about politicians, they often emphasize how good their speech is.

In teaching English, especially spoken, one should well aware of specific phonetic markers of living speech. A student of English should be taught such peculiarities otherwise the spoken text will sound like a read one which would be unnatural and wrong.