Oxford and Cambridge Universities

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 392.

A: I think some → people might be ˋquite interested >to ⌇ _oknow |what >the ⌇principal ˋdifferences are ⌇between the ^↘sort of edu'cation you >get ⌇at → Oxford and ˎCambridge | and ^↘any 'other 'type of UniˋversityEduˎcation. ||

B: > Um... ||

A: > What? ⌇ ^↘What's the 'sort of >thing ⌇ that you would ˋhiqhliqht? ||

B: ˎNaturaˌlly ⌇ >differences ⌇ in eduˋcation... ||

A: ˋYes. ||

В: I supˌpose... ||

A: >Well, | what the university ˋoffers one. | >Why, ⌇ for example one would >choose... ||

B: ˎAh, |I ˎsee. ||

A: ˎYes... to ^↘go to 'one of those universities ⌇ or appˋly to one of those universities ⌇ ^↘ bother to 'take the ˋextra exam. || B: ˎYes. || >Er, | ˎcertainly, | >er, | I think just >this ⌇ I ssˋsocial life in inverted ˋcommas >is ⌇ >er ⌇ a >very ⌇ >er atˋtractive thing about the university ⌇ >which in a way's ⌇ ^↘certainly a | part of edu'cation you reˌceive ⌇ when you go to ˋOxford or ˋCambridge... ||

A: The tu^→ torial ˎsystem ⌇ I >think ⌇ is a parˋticularly good system ⌇>which's been ⌇ par^↘ticularly ^↘finely 'turned up in Oxford and ˎCambridge... ||

B: ˎYa. ||

A: ...though it ˎdoes exist in ˎother universities. || You have a ^↘ great 'deal more ˎfreedom | about what you are going >to ⌇ ^↘what 'course of >study you are pre^→cisely going to >follow. || B: ˌYa. ||

A: There's ^↘very much 'left >to ⌇ one's own ˎchoice. You >have... || In `mycourse I remember | I could look up→ pages and ˋpages of things that I could potentially ˎdo. || B: ˌYes. ||

A: It was _→ really just a ˌquestion of ˌone ˌsitting ˋout | what I ^↘really wanted to do.

The participants are post-graduates, students of the Russian language of Oxford and Cambridge Universities who know each other quite well. They are in the same age group (mid-twenties) and share the same university educational background as ma­ture students.

They discuss quite spontaneously a serious topic, in which

they are competent or rather knowledgeable, interested, but not emotionally involved and concerned.

The subject area specifies somewhat careful elaborated code of the style. As the suggested theme is rather weighty the speak­ers sound rather formal, businesslike, but occasionally interested and even involved.

We think that there are certain grounds for choosing this va­riety of a dialogue as the most suitable for phonostylistic analy­sis. The talk is taking place in a hostel room; the speakers are surrounded by the same set of physical objects and aware of each other's facial and body gestures.

The factuous contact is shown by all sorts of words like: yes, right, sure, of course, expressing the immediate reaction on the part of the listeners as well as all kinds of non-verbal sounds and noises like hm, mm, uhu, aha, etc.

The speakers are relaxed and not worried about the impres­sion they are creating unlike a lecturer or a public speaker. Slips and errors of grammar occur and do not bother them. Similarly, slight carelessness of pronunciation is common, thus we may speak about occasional deviations from the elaborated code.

As any dialogue is a simultaneous act on the part of the sender and addressee, they are both mutually dependent and adapt to the strategies of one another and to the need of the in­formation required. Intonation serves to establish contact be­tween the participants thus realizing the phatic function of speech.

On the prosodic level the dialogue falls into coordinated blocks, split into dialogical units (stimulus — response). Then into phrases, then into intonation groups, each unit character­ized by semantic and phonetic integrity, by certain prosodic in­terrelated features. Correspondingly, the length of pauses be­tween the partners' parts serves as a marker of their contact. The ends of utterance pauses are frequently absent due to the rapid taking up cues:

В.: I suppose

A.: Well, what the university offers one. Why, for example one would choose...

В.: Oh, I see.

Occasional silence for purposes of emphatic pause and fre­quent use of hesitation pauses (both filled and silent) are also characteristic of this talk:

В.: ˎYes. | > Er | ˎcertainly, | >еr, | I think just >this ⌇ssˋsocial life in inverted ˋcommas ⌇ > ⌇ is >er ⌇ a >very ⌇ at`tractive thing about the university...

Among style-marking prosodic features we should mention the following:

Loudness is normal or reduced (piano expression), varied at the block boundaries. Important variation in loudness suggests the degree of seriousness of the thematic information. Sometimes the speakers lower their voices to an inaudible mumble or sim­ply trail off into silence, which is undoubtedly connected with changes in levels and ranges that are lowered and narrowed for many monosyllabic responses.

The rate is flexible as the speakers wish it to be. A speaks very slowly, В — a bit faster, but for both of them the speed is characteristically uneven within and between utterances, varied to outline semantic centres.

The rhythm is non-systematic, greatly varied, interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards the subjective rhyth­mic isochrony; the rhythmicality within the block is achieved by the variation of all prosodic parameters.

The accentuation of semantic centres is achieved by the use of emphatic and compound tones (High Falls, Fall-Rises, Fall + Rises), increase of loudness, widening of the range of nuclei, changes in the rate of utterances and by the great contrast be­tween accented and unaccented segments of phrases.

Pre-nuclear fragments are usually very short — heads with one accented pre-nuclear syllable are most common. High pre-heads occur very often.

The auditory analysis of the above examples and of a great number of similar talks and the recent experiments of phoneti­cians (41, 13, 29) allow us to attempt to draw the invariant of phonostylistic characteristics of informational spontaneous dia­logues. The results are shown in Table 6.