The Invariant of Phonostylistic Characteristics of the Reacting of a News Bulletin (Press Reporting and Broadcasting)
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 552.
The phonostylistic analysis of a reading of a number of news coverage over the radio and television and the experimental data of recent investigations of the style (53, 54) allow us to attempt to draw the invariant of this information style register described in Table 7. Table 7
One can see here that in the text sentences are not excessively long, they tend not to be unduly complicated in their structure. The intonation groups are rather short, otherwise a listener or a viewer will lose the thread of what is being reported. Terminal tones are usually final and very categoric, falls prevail on communicative centres. Falling-rising tones (or even Rise-Fall-Rises) are often heard on the initial short intonation groups introduced for deliberate effects in drawing the listener's attention: A ↘number of 'lorry drivers and vmotorists | were unˎable to pull ˋup in time... || With ↘both 'carriageways vblocked | police `closed the motorway for a .time...
| Timbre | dispassionate, impartial, but resolute and assured; the effect of "chilly distant sounding" (usually achieved by special training of the announcers) | |
| Delimitation | phonopassages — phrases — intonational groups | |
| Style-marking prosodic features | Loudness | normal or increased, contrasted at the phonopassage boundaries |
| Levels and ranges | normal; decrease towards the end of the passage; noticeable increase at the start of any new news item | |
| Rate | not remarkably varied; slow, rarely allegro; deliberately slow (lento) on communicatively important centres | |
| Pauses | rather long, especially at the end of each news item | |
| Rhythm | stable, properly organized | |
| Accentuation of semantic centres | Terminal tones | frequent use of final, categoric falling tones on the semantic centres and falling-rising or rising ones in the initial intonation groups |
| Pre-nuclear patterns | common use of descending heads (very often broken); alternation of descending and ascending heads | |
| The contrast between the accented and unaccented segments | not great |
Now our next step will be the description of the results of the phonological opposition of phonostylistic characteristics of the reading of an informational descriptive text and a news bulletin.
1. Broadcast texts and newspaper articles read aloud convey mainly the intellectual information as it is the language of factual statements; thus attitudinal and emphatic function of intonation is of secondary importance here.
2. The prosodic parameters are not greatly varied in both registers of the style but for several occasions in news bulletins when pitch levels, types of heads and pauses are alternated to break the monotony of speech and draw the listeners' or viewers' attention to something very important in a message. This often happens when events are enumerated. It is a very notable feature here — the ability of good newsreaders to mark the beginning and the end of each new paragraph or topic.
3. The voice timbre is a very important marker of a news coverage reading. It is something peculiar, very easily identified, often labelled as "distant", "indifferent", "impartial", "neutral". It is true, of course, for events of a routine character. When tragic events are broadcast, for instance, all the prosodic features are switched to convey the meaning.
4. In the "news bulletin reading" type of the informational style the use of broken descending heads and fall-rises on initial intonation groups is more common.
5. Pauses tend to be longer, the general tempo is faster than that in the descriptive reading.
6. The "broadcast" reading is more properly rhythmically organized. Highly skilled newsreaders are capable of making the sense clear by the careful control of rhythm.
Now for the conclusion we would like to say that we have described here only one type of the "language of broadcasting" register, which is close to the "ideal" informational descriptive text.
All other suggested spheres of discourse — talking on events over the TV, talking to a listener, discussing the political events, commenting on them, round-table talks of commentators, and others — do not differ greatly from those, described above in the models of the first (descriptive) register. Or they may drift very far from it, become very chatty or high-flown and indulge in sudden changes of the style. For this reason it is much harder to say with certainty what the main style characteristics of such
texts are. They will vary according to the type of the information involved: intellectual, attitudinal or volitional.
And the placement of these texts in the system of intonation-al styles should be approached with caution in mind.
As there is much stylistic freedom in broadcast talks it is difficult to make general statements, give their generalized phonostylistic characteristics with any confidence. There are many broadcast talks with an effort to communicate in a reasonably lively and personal manner. As a consequence they may be rather racy and have more varied prosodic characteristics and stylistic qualities than a news bulletin while resembling it in many respects. This is undoubtedly a very interesting and promising field of investigation and much is expected from the researchers in the nearest future.
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