Academic Style

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 553.

This intonational style is often described by phonostylists as both intellectual and volitional. It is determined by the purpose of the communication as the speaker's aim is to attract the lis­tener's attention, to establish close contacts with the audience and to direct the public attention to the message carried in the contents of the text. It is frequently manifested in academic and educational lectures, scientific discussions, at the conferences, seminars and in classes. As the users of the style are interested in the involvement of the audience into the talk, this intonational style tends to be concerned and rather emotional.

The above-mentioned spheres of discourse have many fea­tures in common which result from certain common influences even though they may have differences according to the speak­er, the occupation of the language user, the exact nature of the occasion, etc.

It can be suggested here that the most pure manifestation of the academic intonational 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, so there may be a great deal of overlap in these cases between different registers.

We would like to mention here that the "ideal model" of the scientific style talk would be an academic informational lecture

read aloud or relied heavily upon the set of notes with the at­tempts on the part of lecturers to get their meaning across clear­ly. The balance between formality and informality is obtained in favour of the former.

The types of this style realization are not so varied as of the informational intonational style though the spheres of discourse are rather numerous (see Table 8).

Having outlined the contours of the style we shall focus our attention on academic lectures or pieces of scientific prose.

It is almost certainly true that no public lecture is ever spon­taneous, since all of them, even those in which no notes are used, will have been to some extent prepared in advance and therefore represent the written variety of the language read aloud. So they have very much in common with the reading of scientific prose.

As was already pointed out above, lecturers either read the whole of what they wish to say from a script or speak with the aid of the notes; and as reliance upon a written version increases the impression of spontaneity will decrease.

Here is the example of a carefully prepared lecture read aloud in public addressed to a fairly-sized audience.

You will ^↘all have ˋseen from the `handouts ⌇ which you have in <sup>v</sup>front of you | that °I pro<sup>↘</sup>pose to di'vide this 'course of <sup>v</sup>lectures ⌇ on the `urban and archi'tectural development of ˌLondon |into ^↘three 'main ˎsections || and per>haps ⌇ I could ^↘just 'point 'out, 'right at the beˌginning, | that there will be a ^↘good 'deal of `overlapbeˎtween them. || They are in_→tended to >stand | as ˌseparate, | ^→ self-contained ˎunits.