STYLISTIC USE OF INTONATION

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 628.

Care should be taken to leave the form words like am, is, are, were, has, have, can,etc. unstressed when necessary. As these words generally occur in unstressed position the weak form is more common than the strong form. It is of great importance for all learners to use the weak forms of these words in unstressed positions. It will improve their speech enormously, and will help them to acquire the characteristic rhythm of spoken English. Un­less they use weak forms of prepositions, articles, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and also personal and possessive pronouns cor­rectly, their rhythm will never be right. When listening to Eng­lish they should try to notice the weak forms, and when speak­ing themselves, to copy the English way of using them. A. The → children are in the ˎhall. || B. → So are their ˎparents. || A. → Yes, they ˎare. || A. I → like them ˎboth. || B. ˎYes, ⌇ I →like them ˎtoo. || A. I'd → rather see ˎthem than ˎanyone. || Russian learners should be especially careful in rhythm-unit break. Mention has been made that the division into rhythmic groups does not coincide with the potential sense groups. The unstressed syllables in between the stressed ones usually tend to link to the preceding stressed syllable in spoken English which Russians often neglect. For example, the typical mistake in pro­nouncing the phrase: "↘Go and ⌇ 'tell him to ⌇ ˎphone me" is something like: " Go ⌇ and 'tell ⌇ 'him ⌇ to ˎphone me." The attention of advanced students who have already mas­tered the stable regularity of English rhythm should be drawn to the rhythmic organization of large rhythmic units, such as into­nation groups, phrases, supraphrasal blocks. The beginning of a rhythmic unit should be said on a higher level, louder and slow­er than the end of it; a pause and the terminal tone at the end of the rhythmic group contribute a lot to their rhythmicality. All you have read about intonation in this chapter is nothing but a much needed framework for understanding its uses in par­ticular social situations. We are going now to refine your knowl­edge of intonation by discussing its stylistic value.

The experimental investigations carried out in recent re­searches give ground to postulate the differences in the prosodic organization of prosaic and poetic rhythm: 1. In verse there are simple contours often with the stepping head, the falling nuclear tone is more often gently sloping; there is a stable tendency towards a monotone. 2. In verse the stressed syllables are stronger marked out by their intensity and duration than in prose. 3. In verse the tempo is comparatively slower than in prose. 4. In verse the rhythmic units except the rhythmic group tend to be more isochronous than in prose. The rhythmic group presents an exception in this tendency of verse. 1 Three vertical bars indicate the end of a phonopassage. We have attempted to portray rhythmic effect in different lin­guistic activities, different speech realizations. To sum it up, we should say that rhythm is a complicated language system, its el­ements being hierarchically organized. They represent hierarchy of functional character, or to put it in more general terms, this system comprises well-organized elements of different sizes in which smaller rhythmic units are joined into more complex ones:, a rhythmical group — an intonation group — a phrase (a line in poetry) — a phonopassage. In discussing rhythm we should emphasize its functional aspect. Rhythm serves to unite elements in speech: smaller units are organized into larger ones, larger units include smaller ones. So rhythm unites text segments into a whole and at the same time cuts the discourse into elements. This integrative and delimitative function of rhythm illustrates the dialectical unity of the contrary manifestations of rhythm. Rhythmically organized speech is easily perceived. From the psycholinguistic point of view the accuracy of the temporal simi­larity in rhythm has a definite effect on the human being. The regularity in rhythm seems to be in harmony with his biological rhythms. And which is by far more important the emotional ef­fect of rhythm especially of poetic rhythm on a human being is very strong, its aesthetic significance is great. In the theory of aesthetics speech rhythm is counted as one of the objective signs of beauty. On the linguistic level the pragmatic value of speech rhythm is realized in its volitional function. Rhythm is capable of ex­pressing different degrees of emotional effect on the listener, e.g. ˋWill you 'stop that 'dreadful ˋnoise. By way of conclusion we would like to say that prosodic ele­ments together with the lexical and syntactical means play the role of the constituent of rhythm. Rhythm in itself is functioning as a framework of speech organization and is a very effective means of speech expressiveness. Unfortunately we very often find the English rhythm to be the stumbling point for Russian learners. Many students learn to make the individual sounds of English correctly enough, yet their speech remains barely intelligible to English ears. The rea­son for this paradox is usually to be found in faulty rhythm and intonation. As we perfectly know the basic rule of English rhythm is that the stressed syllables follow each other at regular intervals of time, that is to say there is the same amount of time between each pair of stressed syllables in a given sentence. A simple illus­tration of this rule is found in counting. From 1 to 6 every sylla­ble is stressed, and they follow each other like a regular drum beat: one, two, three, four, five, six. The number 7 has two sylla­bles, the first of them stressed and the second unstressed and this means that the two syllables have to be said in the same space of time as the other single syllables. The sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 has eleven syllables, but only ten rhythmical beats, corresponding to the ten stressed syllables. Counting is the simplest form of rhythmical exercise. Perhaps the next simplest form is children's verses and counting games. ↘Jack and 'Jill went 'up the > hill | To ↘fetch a 'pail of ˎwater. || → Jack fell ˌdown ⌇ and → broke his ˌcrown | And Jill came 'tumbling ˎafter. || In the foregoing examples there was one unstressed syllable between each pair of stressed ones. The next step will be two un-stressed syllables between each pair of stressed syllables. I ↘like to go 'out in the ˎgarden, | I ↘like to get 'up on the ˎhill | I ↘like to do 'anything ˎreally, | But ↘hate to do 'nothing at ˎall. || The popular sort of comic verse called a limerick has a simi­lar pattern. There are two unstressed syllables between each pair of stresses. Here is an example. There ↘ was a Young 'Lady of ˎNiger | Who smiled as she 'rode on a ˎtiger | They re → turned from the ˌride | With the →lady inˌside | And a ↘smile on the 'face of the ˎtiger. || It is fairly easy to keep the regular drum beat of stresses go­ing, when there are the same number of unstressed syllables be­tween them. It is a little more difficult to do this when there are different number of unstressed syllables between pairs. In the next example there are four stresses in each line, but the first line has no unstressed syllables between the stresses, while the second and the fourth have one unstressed syllable between each pair, yet each line takes the same length of time to say as the others. ↘One, 'two, 'three, ˎfour, | ↘Mary 'at the 'cottage ˎdoor. || ↘Five, 'six, 'seven, ˎeight | ↘Eating 'cherries 'off a ˎplate. || In the serious verse that follows the number of unstressed syllables in between the pairs of stressed ones is sometimes one and sometimes two so that the absolute regularity is missing. Nevertheless the stresses still form a drum beat as before and this beat must be kept going all through the lines. ↘Give a 'man a 'pipe he can ˎsmoke | Give a 'man а 'book he can ˎread | And his → home is ˎbright | With a →calm deˎlight | Though the ↘room is 'poor inˎdeed. || In ordinary speaking the number of unstressed syllables be­tween each consecutive pair of stresses varies considerably. This is one of the main differences between prose and verse, so it is important to be able to keep the drum beat of the stresses going regularly no matter what the number of intervening unstressed syllables. Here is an exercise designed to help do this.   Can ↘anyone 'tell me the ˎtime? || Does ↘anyone 'know the ˎtime? || Does ↘anyone 'know ˎTom? || I'm ↘going to 'town for the ˎday. || I'm ↘going to 'town toˎday. || I'm ↘going to 'town ˎnow. || I'm ↘ perfectly 'certain you're ˎright, || I'm ↘almost 'certain you're ˎright. || I'm ↘quite 'certain you're ˎright. ||   A long passage of a descriptive text may be now recom­mended for practising rhythm. For example: The → weather in ˌEngland ⌇ can → change 'very ˎquickly. || → One 'day 'last ˌweek | I ↘went for a ˋwalk in the ˎcountry. || → When I ˌstarted ⌇ → early in the ˌmorning | the → weather was ˎbeautiful. || The → sun was ˎshining, ⌇ the → sky was ˎblue | and there were ↘no 'clouds at ˎall.

This section sets out to give a detailed description of each in-tonational style. It also tends to be a meaningful guide to the stylistically distinctive function of intonation. As the scope of this course is theoretical we shall try to deal with problems con­cerning phonostylistics in general and with reference to particu­lar intonational style description rather than the analysis of each style registers, so that a number of theoretical confusions may be identified and possibly cleared. We must admit, however, that there are so many deviations from norms in speech reality now­adays that the problems of phonostylistics are nowhere near so­lution.

It becomes necessary as a preliminary exercise to review some of the influential ways in which the intonational styles were described in the textbook "Практическая фонетика английского языка" (28). The authors of this book give the following definition of the intonational style: "An intonational 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" (28, p. 216).

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. The achievements in experi­mental phonetics put forward in recent years, concrete examples and conclusions taken from the research field work allowed the authors of the book mentioned to single out the following into­national styles:

1 Informational. •

2. Academic (Scientific).

3. Publicists (Oratorial).

4. Declamatory (Artistic).

5. Conversational (Familiar).

As the chapter proceeds we shall attempt to show that both the definition and classification of styles are not factitious ones but concrete examples taken from experimental data.

In our view the conception that the intonational style mark­ers are restricted to .certain kinds of situational contexts and above all to the speakers' aim in communication is extremely valuable. Thus an intonational style is seen as some kind of ad­ditive by which a basic content of thought may be modified.

This view of style sees it as the variable means by which a mes­sage is communicated.

It is already widely accepted that the purpose of communica­tion determines the types of information conveyed in oral texts. They may be intellectual, attitudinal (emotional, modal) and vo­litional (desiderative). Each of these types is realised by means of specific prosodic parameters.

These stylistically marked modifications of all the prosodic features represent the invariantsof the style forming intonation patterns common to all the registers of the particular style.

Thus it may be said that there is a strongly marked tendency for suprasegmental prosodic features to form a basic set of recur­rent patterns, which is occasionally distributed by the introduc­tion of specific prosodic and paralinguistic effects.

The invariant of the intonation patterns circulating in certain fields of communication at a given period of time may be treated as the norm or the ideal of speech behaviour for these particular spheres of communication. But the task set by phoneticians now is not only to determine the invariants but also to note and inter­pret various deviations from them. It should be mentioned, how­ever, that deviations should not exceed the range of tolerance set by the invariant.

It has already been assumed that intonation patterns vary in accordance with types of information present in communication. Presumably there may be patterns used for: (a) intellectual pur­poses, (b) emotional and attitudinal purposes, (c) volitional and desiderative purposes, by which the substantive goals of speakers are carried out. As any discourse carries intellectual information intellectual intonation patterns are present in every style. The dis­tribution of attitudinal and volitional patterns shapes the particu­lar intonational style and distinguishes one from another. From the point of view of this distribution the informational style seems to be the most neutral as its main purpose is to convey informa­tion without the speaker's concern or personal involvement. Evi­dently, there are theoretical and procedural reasons to regard it as. the starting point of the intonational styles description and the basic invariant for opposition as there are fewer deviations there as in any other style from the minimal reader/speaker involve­ment. It is the least marked kind of situationally influenced Eng­lish and therefore it may be considered as the opening variety for phonostylistic analysis. So we shall begin with this style and make an attempt to deal with it in its entirety.

We must admit, however, that any intonational style is an extremely complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. Even a single speech act involves an extraordinary range of factors and could be considered from any different even conflicting points of view.

Confronted with all these difficulties a phonostylist must ask himself what the goal of his analysis is and direct his attention to essentials. In this book the description will be focused on those style forming features that may present certain amount of interest for would-be teachers of English and find practical application J in their work. Let all the matters of controversy and major arguments be reviewed and evaluated elsewhere. f

1. Informational Style |

This intonational style is sometimes qualified as "formal", J "neutral", since in an ideal setting, in its pure manifestation it is least of all influenced or correlated by extralinguistic factors.

Where is it then purely manifested? First of all, in the written variety of an informational narrative read aloud. The majority of these texts are of a purely descriptive character and are simply called descriptive narratives. The written speech, the reading, should not be subjected to the contextual variables and the com­monest and "ideal" situation for this register is the reading of such texts in class. They may be labelled as educational infor­mational descriptive narratives.

As is widely known, spoken speech is less imperial, the spo­ken variety of such texts expresses more personal concern and involvement. They may be presented in different forms: mono­logues, dialogues, polylogues.

Press reporting and broadcasting,especially the reading of the news coverage over the radio is very close in its manner to this type of the style as the reader tends to sound impartial when reporting routine news or weather forecasts, for example.

It should be noted here that the reading of news coverage in a TV studio differs from the one over the radio as it suggests the attempts on the side of the announcer to address the viewers, so some emotional evaluation may appear in the information.

The news bulletin and broadcast talk have both written and spoken existences which are of equal importance for the simple reason that they were written specially to be read aloud. The in­

formational style includes other spheres of communication: busi­ness and legal intercourse, the reading of administrative docu­ments and so on.

The degree of formality in the character of participants' rela­tionship in different types of the informational style presentation may smooth the borderline between them. Thus it would be wrong to identify this style as formal, because the degree of for­mality may vary. As it was stated earlier, the contours of the in­tonational styles presentation in speech reality have not been very definitely outlined yet. So the most informal realization of any kind of information in the form of a dialogue may lead to a conversational style, and, respectively, extra formal sounding of information may lead to an academic style talk and so on.

We shall limit our description of the style to two common types: educational information and press reporting/broadcasting. We would like to specify here that types of style,i.e. certain spheres of discourse would be called registers,the term being widely used abroad in a broader sense, often meant as style in general. The table below shows the correlation between the in­formational intonational style registers, and speech typology.

Table 1

Roughly speaking, any variety of the language, both written and spoken, may be presented either by reading or speaking in a prepared or spontaneous way in a formal or informal manner.

Table 2

We would like to attempt now to suggest certain spheres of discourse in which the informational intonational style (IIS) could be heard in relation to forms of communication and the number of participants involved.

Now, when we have more or less definitely outlined the con­tours of the style, our next step will be to analyse prosodic char­acteristics of this particular intonational style. As it was stated in Chapter I, the following parameters of prosodic analysis should be applied to a text: pitch (variations of pitch direction, pitch level, pitch range), loudness, tempo (the rate of the utterance and pausation). It also includes rhythm and timbre as they have very specific suprasegmental expression of various emotional, expressive and evaluative overtones.

It would be fair to admit here that when faced with a text of some kind — what appears to be a mass of coordinated data — a starting point for analysis is often difficult to choose.

As it was suggested above, the ideal start is an informational, purely descriptive text, most commonly heard in class. We think that it is a basic-measuring rod for the types of styles of other situations. The analysis of it here is carried out by the procedure of systematic phonological opposition: the phonostylistic organi­zation of reading will be systematically compared with the spo­ken version (in the forms of a monologue and a dialogue). The main reason for this is that it seemed to be dictated by the re­quirements of close study of the specimens in comparison since the two varieties of the language differ greatly in sound and have their own distinctive specifications of pronunciation and the correspondence between them should be looked at.

The description of the informational intonational style will proceed in the following order:

I. Informational educational texts.

1. The phonostylistic analysis of the written descriptive nar­ratives.

2. The analysis of the spoken variety of such texts.

3. The opposition of spoken and written speech produced in the form of a monologue.

4. The analysis of characteristic phonostylistic features of dia­logues on the topic suggested in the monologues.

5. The opposition of the phonostylistic parameters of a mo­nologue and a dialogue.

II. Press reporting and broadcasting.

1. The description and analysis of characteristic prosodic features of a news bulletin reading over the radio.

2. The opposition of the news bulletin and an informational descriptive text reading characteristics.

III The conclusion.