Lecture 12.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 2775.

PHONOSTYLISTICS AND ITS PROBLEMS.

1. Phonostylistics and its development.

2. Extrzlinguistic situation and its main constituents.

3. The problem of classification of phonetic style.

1. Phonostyliscs and its development.

The branch of phonetics which studies stylistic variations in learning, understanding and producing language is called phonostylistics.

Phonostylistics studies the way phonetics means are used in this or that particular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of factors which are referred to as extralinguistic. The aim of phonostylistics is to analyze all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to classify them into categories based upon a view of their function.

It is taken to be reasonably obvious t5hat much of what people say depends directly or indirectly on the situation they are in. The nature of this dependency can be termed extralinguistic. Nobody would want to deny the fact that spoken speech is the primary medium of language expression. So when linguists became involved in investigating language in use they realized that language is not an isolated phenomenon, it is a part of society. In real life people find themselves in various and numerous situations. In these situations language is used appropriately, i.e. people select from their total linguistic repertoires those elements which match the needs of particular situations.

The principles of the selection and arrangement, the ways of combining the elements form what is called “the style”.

Style integrates language means constructing the utterance, and at the same time differs on utterance from another. The branch of linguistics that is primarily concerned with the problems of functional styles is called functional stylistics. Stylistics is usually regarded as a specific division of linguistics concerned not with the elements of the language as such but with their expressive potential.

2. Extralinguistic situation and its main constituents:

a) purpose;

b) participants;

c) setting;

It is obviously necessary to try to explain what is meant by extralinguistic situation or factors. It is the sum total of factors which lie outside any possibility of signaling linguistic meaning. The analysis shows that any extralinguistic situation can be defined by three components, that is purpose, participants, setting. These components distinguish situation as the context within which interaction (communication) occurs.

Learning a foreign language the student, however, will often continue to interpret situations as he would in his own culture the result may be an inappropriate usage of intonation structure with the wrong meaning. For example, in Ukraine the leave-taking допобачення can be pronounced both with low rising and low falling tones, which sound neutral, while in English Good-bye! pronounced with a low falling tone sounds fairly rude, while rising tone makes it neutral.

Analyzing extralinguistic factors we should add some more to the above-mentioned ones. They are: the speaker's individuality, temporal provenance, social provenance, range of intelligibility, sex and age of the speaker.

One of the most important style-modifying factors is the degree of spontaneity. So if we examine the situations in which people speak rather than write from the point of view of psychology we can distinguish between those in which they are speaking spontaneously as opposed to those in which they are speaking non-spontaneously as the actor and the lecturer are most often doing.

3. The problem of classification of phonetic styles.

An intonation style can be defined as a system of interrelated intonational means which is used in a social sphere and serves a definite aim of communication.

The choice of an intonational style is determined primarily by the purpose of communication and then by a number of other extralinguistic and social factors. There are differences between some authors about the number of functional styles and their names. Among the well-known classifications of phonetic styles the following two may be mentioned. One of them belong to S.M.Gaiduchic. He distinguished five phonetic styles: solemn, scientific business, official

business, everyday, and familiar. As we may see the above-mentioned phonetic styles on the whole correlate with functional styles of the language. The are differentiated on the basis of spheres of discourse. The other way of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by J.A.Dubovskiy who discriminates the following five styles: informal, ordinary, formal neutral , formal official, and declamatory. The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener. Within each style subdivisions are observed. But as the author himself writes it is rather the principle of presenting the textx for description and analysis because “no theory has yet created a completely symmetrical classification of speech acts'.

M.A.Sokolova grounds her classification on intonation and singles out such intonation styles are as follows: 1. Informal style. (Conversational/Familiar.)

2. Academic style. (Scientific.)

3. Publicistic style. (Oratorial.)

4. Declamatory style. (Artistic/Belles-letters (fiction and drama.)

5. Informational style.

Poetic style is either included in Artistic style or investigated separately as the sixth intonational functional style.

Functional styles reveal their language peculiarities on a number of levels, including grammar, vocabulary and phonetics.

The formal means employed to mark different intonational styles in speech are all the main components of the prosodic system of a language:

- changes of pitch (range, level and contour);

- changes of energy (variations of stress and rhythm);

- changes of duration (tempo and pauses);

- changes of timbre or voice quality.

It is the relative frequency and the combinatorial peculiarities in the use of the above-mentioned prosodic features that chiefly serve as intonational style markers. But differentiation of intonation according to the purpose of communication only is definitely not enough. As was mentioned above, there are other factors that affect intonation in various extralinguistic situations. Any style with very little exception is seldom realized in its pure form. Each generated text is likely to include phonetic characteristics of different styles. In such cases we talk about overlapping (fusion) of styles.

To summarize we could say that the distinction of phonetic styles is a purely formal one because any particular theory while in use should control and give meaning to the descriptive statement. So in this respect the suggested classification is near to adequate way of reflecting numerous speech realizations, on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is the way to understand and interpret the system. If we attempted to systemize all our observations and account for all the options the task would prove daunting. What we need to do in teaching is simply to call attention to the most marked features of the style ignoring the relatively stable features.

Questions for self-control:

1. What is the subject of phonostylistics?

2. What are the main components of extralinguistic situation?

3. What does the choice of intonation styles depend on?

Lecture 13.

CLASSIFICATION OF PHONETIC STYLES.

1. Conversational style.

2. Academic style.

3. Publicistic style/

4. Declamatory style.

5. Informational style.

1. Conversational style.

The usage of conversational style is typical of natural spontaneous, everyday speech. It is the most commonly used type of intonational style and consequently a variety which will be more familiar to the vast majority of English-speaking people than any other. That is why it is called familiar. This kind of English is also a means for everyday communication, heard in natural conversational interaction between speakers. So phonetic stylists call it conversational. Some scholars also call it informal, because this style occurs mainly in informal external and internal relationships in the speech of relatives, friends, well-acquainted people and so on.

In informal situations, where speakers are more relaxed, less attention is given by them to the effect they produce on the listeners. It is the most situationally influenced kind of English.

Spontaneous, colloquial, informal conversations display certain common linguistic characteristics.

1. Firstly, talks of this kind are characterized by the inexplicitness of the language as the speakers rely very much upon the extralinguistic factors – context, kinestics, etc. This manifests itself in “incompleteness” of many utterances as the context make it clear what was meant by the speaker, thus making redundant its vocal expression/

2. Secondly, conversations are characterized by the lack of planning and the randomness of subject matter. They are very often unpredictable, not guided to an overall theme.

3. The third general feature of the conversational style talks is “non-fluency”. Informal spontaneous conversation is characterized by a high proportion of “errors” involving hesitation phenomena, slips of the tongue and all sorts of overlapping and simultaneous speech.

There are a few other points to be mentioned on the syntactical

level:

1. High proportion of parenthetic compound types of sentence introduced by you see, you know, I mean, I say and others.

2. Frequent use of interrogative sentence types and very few

imperatives.

3. Common use of vocatives, especially in initial position.

4. Rare use of nominal groups as subjects; the personal pronouns

are more in evidence, the informal you is quite common in its

impersonal function.

5. A great number of question tags.

6. The use of all sorts of repetitions and repetition structures.

Even adverbial ntensifiers such as very may be repeated

several times.

7. The occurrence of contracted verbal forms (he's, I'll, I've).

8. The frequency of colloquial ellipses.

On the prosodic level the following characteristics of conversational style should be noted:

1. Intonation groups are rather short, their potentially lengthy tone units tend to be broken. These short interpausal units are characterized by decentralized stress and

Sudden jumps down on communicative centres.

2. The heads are usually level, or rarely, falling. Falling heads

occur only in groups consisting of several stressed syllables.

3. As for the nuclear , simple falling and rising tones are common. Emphatic tones occur in highly emotional contexts. High pre-nuclear syllable are very frequent.

4. The tempo of colloquial speech is very varied. The natural speed

might be very fast but the impression of “slowness” may arise

because of a great number of hesitation pauses both filled and

non-filled (hesitant drawls). However, the speakers may

have no pauses between their parts, very often they speak

simultaneously, interrupt each other.

2. Academic style.

The intonational style is often described as both intellectual and volitional. The speaker's aim here is to attract the listener's attention, to establish close contacts with the audience and to direct the public attention to the massage carried in the contents of the text.

. It is frequently met in academic and educational lectures, scientific discussions, at the onferences, seminars and in classes. This style tends to be concerned and emotional.

The most pure manifestation of the academic style is realized in a lecture though a “lecture” is a very broad label which covers a variety of types. Lectures may sometimes sound as oratorical performances designed to entertain rather than inform. The “ideal model” of the scientific style talk would be an academic informational lecture which possesses the following properties:

1.A scientific text read aloud in public in front of the audience conveys both intellectual and volitional information, so the attitudinal and emphatic function of intonation are of primary importance here.

2. A lecturer always sounds self-assured, authoritative, instructive and edifying, because any scientific style talk should be well prepared and is often even rehearsed by a lecturer.

3. A scientific style presenter sounds much louder than any informational text reader as any public oration is produced face to face with a fairly-sized audience. Instances of diminished loudness are observed in bringing out phrases expressing forgetfulness, uncertainty, word-searching.

4. The prosodic features of the academic style reading are rather varied. This variety is created by:

a) the alternation of pauses, types of heads, pitch levels, terminal tones;

b) the use of variations and contrast of the tempo to help the

listener to differentiate between the more and less important parts of the text. The speaker usually slows down when he introduces rules, terms, scientific laws.

5. The rhythmical organization of a scientific text is properly balanced by the alternation of all prosodic features, which gives the acoustic impression of “rhythmically”.

6. High falling and falling-rising terminal tones are widely used as a means of both logical and contrastive emphasis.

3. Publicistic style.

This intonation style is often called oratorical.

The aim of the speaker here is to extend persuasive and emotional influence on the listeners.

It is especially noticeable in public political speeches, but also can be met in judicial speeches, sermons, congresses, press-conferences, meetings.

Two important things should be remembered concerning oratorical style:

1. It requires special skills; a speaker must be specially taught to deliver a speech to the audience.

2. Speeches (orations, public addresses) are never spontaneous, almost always written, but sometimes are not read to produce the effect of spontaneity (quasi-spontaneous).

PHONETIC PECULIARITIES OF PUBLICISTIC STYLE.

I. Style-making prosodic features:

1. Loudness is enormously increased, ranging from forte to fortissimo,

but sometimes decreased loudness occurs to bring out words and phrases of paramount importance and to produce certain psychological effect.

2. Ranges and levels are greatly varied, predominantly wide ranges are used; a very high level of the start of the initial sense-group is observed here.

3. Rate is moderately slow, but some unimportant parts of the speech are pronounced.

4. Pauses play a very important role in exerting influence upon the auditory. It should be mentioned that:

a) definitely long pauses are used before the passages;

b) there are many breath-taking pauses in public speeches;

c) interpausal segments are rather short, thus phrases may be overloaded by pauses;

d) frequent stop of phonation before the emphatic semantic centre is observed in public speeches;

e) the use of so-called “rhetorical silence” is aimed to influence the public.

5. Rhythm is properly organized.

6. Timber is dignified, self-assured, concerned and personally involved.

II. The accentuation of semantic centers:

1. Terminal tones are mostly emphatic, especially on emotional semantic centers; in non-final intonation groups the falling-rising tones are used.

2. Scales are usually descending, generally falling ones. The Broken Heads often occur due to wide use of the Accidental Rise. The speakers often use the so-called “rhetorical trick” – High Level Heads are alternated with Low Level Heads.

4. Informational style.

The informational style is qualified as forma,l neutral. It occurs in the written variety of some information read aloud. Here two main realizations of informational style pieces will be discussed – informational educational texts press reporting and broadcasting.

When speaking about informational educational texts it should be noted that there distinguished two varieties of such texts – read aloud and spoken. Reading and speaking each requires directed intensive efforts. Consequently, the phonetic features of these varieties of texts would be basically different.

To show the opposition of spoken and written informational texts read aloud there given a comparable table containing the phonostylistic parameters of these varieties.

Press reporting and broadcasting, especially the reading of the news over the radio is characterized by a high degree of formality as the reader tends to sound impartial when reporting routine news. The central function here is to inform, to present a certain number of facts to a listener or a viewer with the effect of giving the impression of neutral, objective,factual reporting.

It should be noted that the speech of radio and television announcers is sometimes different – the ability to be seen on the screen helps a TV news reader to guide better understanding to the viewers by means of facial expressions and gestures while the radio announcer, being isolated in a studio, tends to use certain prosodic features to be better understood by a listener.

Nevertheless, it is possible to speak about phonostylistic regulations in radio and TV news reading as these two realizations have much in common.

5. Declamatory style.

The term “declamatory” serves for many kinds of linguistic activity. Two varieties of oral representation of representation of written literary texts will be discussed here:

1) reading aloud a piece o descriptive prose (the author's speech or a monologue);

2) the author's reproduction of actual conversation (the speech of characters or a dialogue);

MONOLOGUE: The intonation of reading descriptive prose has many features in common with that of reading scientific prose.

In the pre-nuclear part the Low Pre-head may be combined with the Descending Falling Head, or the Broken Head.

The nuclear tone in final intonation groups is generally the Low Fall, or less frequently - the High Fall. The principle nuclear tones is non-final intonation groups are the Low Fall, the High Fall and the Fall-Rise. The Low Fall, especially the one which does not reach the lowest possible pitch-level is preferable here.

The speed of utterance in reading descriptive prose is relatively slow and as a result there are no marked variations in rhythm. Pauses may be different in length but long pauses are more common.

DIALOGUE: The intonation adequate for reading dialogue is remindful of actual conversation, but there is no one-for-one correlation between them. It is not a pure and simple reproduction of the intonation that might be heard in the natural speech of living people (spontaneous dialogues).

In the pre-nuclear part the Low or High Pre-Head may be combined with any variety of the descending, ascending or level heads.

In the terminal tone both simple and compound tunes are widely used, especially - falling-rising tones.

The pitch level in most utterances is generally high and the range is wide.

The overall speed of the utterance is normal or increased as compared with natural speech and as a result the rhythm is more regular. Pauses are always semantically or syntactically predictable. Hesitation pauses do not occur unless they are deliberately used for stylization purposes.

Questions for self-control:

1. What is typical for everyday speech?

2. What style is described as both intellectual and volitional?

3. What are the phonetic peculiarities of the publicistic style?

4. How is the informational style qualified?

5. What are the two main oral variations of linguistic activity?

Список литературы

для подготовки к семинарским и практическим занятиям:

1. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. Соколова М.А.,М.,Владос, 1996

2. Практическая фонетика английского языка. Соколова М.А.,Владос, 2001

3. Intonation of Colloquial English, O'Connor J.D., Longmans, 1962

4. Enjoy Practising Phonetics. Левицкий А.Е., Гаращук Л.А., Винница, 2004.

5. Практический курс английского языка, под ред проф.Аракина В.Д., 1, 2 ч., Владос, М., 2000.

6. Курс лекций по теоретической фонетике. Сост.ст.преп. Матвеевой Л.В.

7. Глоссарий по теоретической фонетике. Сост.ст.преп. Матвеевой Л.В.

8. Pronunciation Dictionary. J.C.Wells, Longman, 2000.

9. English Pronunciation Dictionary. D.Jones, Советская Энциклопедия, М., 1963.

Seminar 1.

1. The subject of phonology. Language and speech.

2. Phonetics and speech sounds. The speech process and its main stages.

3. Phonetics and its branches. The connection of phonetics with linguistic sciences.

Seminar 2.

1.. The notion of the phoneme. The main trends in phoneme theory.

2. Phonemes and their allophones.

3. The distributional and semantic methods in phonology.

Seminar 3.

1. The English phonemic system.

2. Syllabic and accentual structure of English words.

3. Stress and rhythm. Two main types of speech rhythm.

Seminar 4.

1. Prosody as a complex of prosodic elements. Parts of the descending scale.

2. Rhythm as a linguistic notion.

3. The main intonation patterns and their functions.

Seminar 5.

1. Phonostylistics and its development.

2. Extralinguistic situation and its main constituents.

3. The problem of classification of phonetic styles.

Список вопросов к экзамену/зачету по теоретической фонетике.

1. The subject of phonology.

2. Language and speech.

3. The main parts of phonology as corresponding to the three levels of linguistic analysis.

4. The category of “semeological relevance” as the main category of the feature level.

5 . Phonemes and their positional variants. The category of opposition.

6. Distinctive features and definitions of phonemes on their basis.

7. Redundancy of speech and cues.

8. The method of minimal pairs.

9. The method of distinctive oppositions and its advantages.

10. Principle approaches and socio-linguistic factors in phonological system.

11. Syllable as a unit of speech chain segmentation.

12. Principles of classification of English vowels and consonants.

13. Stress. The rules of stress in English compound words and auxiliaries.

14. Prosody as a complex of prosodic elements. Pitch, tempo, intensity of loudness.

15. Rhythm. Two main types of speech rhythm.

16. The main English intonation pattern. Parts of the descending scale.

17. The Glide Down and its semantic functions.

18. The Glide Up and its semantic functions.

19. The Interrupted Glide Down and its semantic functions.

20. The High Dive and its semantic functions.

21. The High Rise and its semantic functions.

22. The High Fall and its semantic functions.

23. The English phonemic system.

24. The main trends in phoneme theory.

25. Phonetics and the main stages in its development.

26. Phonetics and its branches.

27. Phonetics and its connection with linguistic sciences.

28. The theoretical and practical aspects of Phonetics.

29. The system of English phonemes.

30. General principle of vowel and consonant formation.

31. Synchronic, diachronic and socio-linguistic factors in phonological system.

32. Accentual structure in English. Factors, kinds and degrees of word accent.

33. Phonostylistics and its development.

34. Extralinguistic situation and its main constituents.

35. The problem of classification of phonetic styles.

ЗАДАНИЯ ДЛЯ САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНОЙ РАБОТЫ

СТУДЕНТОВ.

PHONETIC ANALYSIS OF A SENTENCE.

Step 1. Transcribe the sentence and show the end by putting down two

vertical lines at the end.

Step 2. Define the communicative and syntactical type of the sentence.

Step 3. Divide the sentence into sense-groups, if possible, and separate one sense group from another by a vertical line (or a wavy line, in case the pause between the sense-groups is very short).

Step 4. Define the nucleus of the sentence (of every sense-group) and put down the necessary tone-mark before it (before the stressed syllable of the word).

Step 5. See if there is a word to emphasize in the sentence (sense-group). If there is one put down the necessary mark before it to show the emphasis.

Step 6. Define all the other stressed words in the sentence and put down

stress marks before them.

Step 7. Intone the sentence graphically.

Step 8. Define all the phoneme clusters in the words and at their junctions, and mark different phonetic phenomena using the conventional symbols.

Step 9. Practise reading the sentence.

1. POETIC STYLE : Listen to one of the poems; mark stresses and tunes; analyze the poem according to the plan; learn the poem by heart, trying to imitate the tapescript.

Tapescripts 1 – 7;

2. DECLAMATORY STYLE:

1.Listen to the Tapescripts (8, 9); mark stresses and tunes; dramataize. Analyze the peculiariries of the style according to the plan.

2. Listen to the Tapescript 10, mark stresses and tunes, analyse the style of the story according to the plan; prepare for the artistic reading, trying to imitate the tapescript.

3. PUBLICISTIC STYLE: Listen to any Tapescript (11 – 13), mark stresses and tunes; analyze the peculiarities of the style; prepare for artistic reading, trying to imitate the tapescript.

4. ACADEMIC STYLE: Listen to the Tapescripts (14, 15), mark stresses and tunes; analyse the peculiarities of the style; read the extract, trying to imitate the tapescript.

5. INFORMATIONAL STYLE: Listen to any Tapescript (16 – 19), mark stresses and tunes; analyze the peculiarities of the style; prepare the reading of the

text, trying to imitate the tapescript.

6. CONVERSATIONAL STYLE: Listen to one of the dialogues (Tapescripts 20 – 23), mark stresses and tunes; analyze the peculiarities of the style; dramatize one of the dialogues, trying to imitate the tapescript.

Plan of phonostylistic analysis.

1. General short description of the peculiarities of the style.

2. The aim of the speech or the dialogue represented.

3. Main lexical and syntactical stylistic devices used in the fragment and their intonational peculiarities.

4. The sense-groups division.

5. Basic intonation patterns (pre-head, scale, nuclear tone).

6. Tempo.

7. Pauses.