Stylistic use of intonation

    

 

 

 

 

                               TERM PAPER

        STYLISTIC USE OF INTONATION           (INFORMATIONAL, ACADEMIC, PUBLICISTIC, DECLAMATORY, CONVERSATIONAL STYLES)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

   CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...3
2. ENGLISH INTONATION , ITS STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS…………………....4
3. THE FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS OF ENGLISH INTONATION………………………...9
4. PHONOSTYLISTICS AND STYLISTIC USE OF INTONATION……………………13
5. PROBLEMS OF PHONOSTYLISTICS………………………………………………...13
6. INTONATIONAL STYLES…………………………………………………………….15
7. STYLISTIC USE OF INTONATION IN LITERATURE, PRESS, BROADCASTING, EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION…………………………………………………….18
8. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………….....22

                           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                INTRODUCTION

The actuality of the term paper.

In linguistics, intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is not used to distinguish words, instead it is used for a range of functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signalling the difference between statements and questions, and between different types of question, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation in some languages does distinguish words, either lexically or grammatically. Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation, it is important to be aware that functions attributed to intonation such as the expression of attitudes and emotions, or highlighting aspects of grammatical structure, almost always involve concomitant variation in other prosodic features. Crystal for example says that "...intonation is not a single system of contours and levels, but the product of the interaction of features from different prosodic systems – tone, pitch-range, loudness, rhythmicality and tempo in particular."

The aim of the term paper.

The aim of this work is to distinguish the intonational styles from each other to study about the structure of English intonation and its stylistic use.

The objectives of the term paper.

1. To study phonology and the stylistic use of intonation.
2. To reveal peculiarities of the intonational styles .
3. To create an effective model in order to distinguish intonational styles.

The scientific novelty of the term paper.

Combining principles of intonation we conclude that it's important to recognize the meaning behind the tones used in everyday speech, and to be able to use them so that there are no misunderstandings between the speaker and the listener. It is generally true that mistakes in pronunciation of sounds can be overlooked, but mistakes in intonation make a lasting impression. 

 

 

       ENGLISH INTONATION,  ITS STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS

Another part of suprasegmental phonology is intonation. Intonation is a language universal. There are no languages which are spoken as a monotone, without any change of prosodic parameters. But intonation functions in various languages in a different way. So our attention will be turned to the role of intonation in the language and its contribution to the communicative value of the act of speech. Intonation hasn’t been thoroughly investigated yet, as such research involves the use of both special skills and particular technical devices and equipment. From the very beginning of phonetics as a science phoneticians preferred to study segmental phonemes rather than intonation, so now we have a far more detailed analysis of English sounds than of its intonation patterns. Teachers of phonetics also prefer to concentrate their attention on sounds, as the recognition of intonation variations requires a special skill, the so-called musical ear, which is difficult to acquire and develop. Native speakers use intonation unconsciously. Intonational differences in the native language seem to be the first to be perceived and acquired by children, so they are rooted so deeply in their minds that when they come to studying a foreign language, interference (influence) of the native intonation is the strongest and the most difficult to get rid of. More  than that. Very often the misuses of intonation patterns in a foreign language are perceived by native speakers not as mistakes, but as an intentional act, so such situations may cause misunderstanding and even offence. The study of intonation went through many stages: as individual sounds, intonation can be examined on different levels – auditory, acoustic and functional. We shall start with the description of intonation on the auditory and acoustic levels, and then pass on to its linguistic function.

 

                              The Structure of English Intonation

Most linguists agree that on perception level intonation is a complex unity formed by significant variations of pitch, tempo, loudness and timbre. Nowadays there is another term – prosody – which is used in linguistics, sometimes meaning “intonation”. According to the British School intonation refers to pitch (or melody) variations, and prosody embraces pitch, loudness, tempo and voice quality (or timbre). Intonation starts with a phrase, an utterance, while prosody has a wider domain: from a syllable to the whole text. But for convenience in our textbook we shall not discriminate between prosody and intonation and use the terms interchangeably.                             There hasn’t been created a suitable definition of either intonation or prosody, but we can see that pitch comes first as the most important and most “linguistic” component. Timbre or voice quality has been recently added to the definition of intonation, as it serves to give additional or emotional colouring to the speech. Some scientists consider it the least linguistic component and refer it to paralinguistics. On acoustic level pitch correlates with the fundamental frequency (the rate of vibrations of the vocal cords), loudness correlates with intensity (the amplitude of vibrations), tempo is the correlate of duration (or time), voice quality correlates with spectral characteristics.The linguistic level is concerned with the meanings expressed by the components of intonation or the function of intonation in the process of communication.                                          As we’ve mentioned already among the four components of intonation pitch and pitch movements seem to have some priority, though the other three parts can’t be ignored as well. Each syllable of the speech chain has a special pitch colouring and bears a definite amount of loudness. Pitch movements are connected with loudness; together with the tempo of speech they form an intonation pattern, which is the basic unit of intonation. Intonation patterns serve to actualize syntagms in oral speech. A syntagm is a group of words which is semantically and syntactically complete. In phonetics actualized syntagms are called intonation groups. A phrase may contain more than one intonation group. The number of intonation groups depends on the length of the phrase and the degree of semantic importance or emphasis given to various parts, etc.:

This boy ┊  was ↘not a ˈmodel °pupil||

  This ↘boy was ˈnot a ˈmodel °pupil||

Now let’s see how each of the constituents of intonation actualizes such language units as syntagms, sentences, phrases. Among the pitch parameters we shall concentrate on the variations in the direction of pitch, pitch level and pitch range. Pitch changes can’t be separated from loudness, so we shall discuss pitch-and-stress structure of the intonation pattern.Not all stressed syllables in a phrase are of equal importance. One of the syllables has the greater prominence than the others and forms the nucleus of an intonation pattern. The nucleus is normally the last strongly accented syllable in an intonation pattern, which marks a significant change of pitch direction (where it goes up or down). The nuclear tone is the most important part of the intonation pattern without which the latter cannot exist at all. On the other hand an intonation pattern may consist of only one syllable which is its nucleus. In general nuclear tones may be falling, rising and level or a combination of these movements. Each movement may begin on a lower or higher level, thus producing a variety of nuclear tones. For teaching purposes the following most important and frequently used nuclear tones are chosen: °Low Fall,  èHigh (Mid) Fall, ™Low Rise,  æHigh (Mid) Rise,  ëFall-Rise,  ^Rise-Fall, >Level. Speakers are said to select from a choice of tones according to how they want the utterance to be heard. During the development of modern phonetics in the twentieth century it was hoped that scientific study of intonation would make it possible to state what the function of each different aspect of intonation was, and that foreign learners could then be taught rules to enable them to use intonation in the way that native speakers use it. However these rules are not quite adequate as a complete practical guide to how to use English intonation.                                                                   .            The meanings of the nuclear tones are difficult to specify even in general terms. Roughly speaking, falling tone is usually regarded as more or less “neutral”, it gives an impression of “finality, completeness and certainty”:

I’ll come in an °hour.

Rising tone conveys an impression that something more is to follow , it has the general meaning of “incompleteness, uncertainty, dependence”:

- Have you seen Ann? - No.

Some not very important parenthetical information is often spoken with a rising tone to show that it’s incomplete and depends on the main sentence:

…and then, on the left, you’ll see my house.

The fall-rise is used a lot in English, it combines the meaning of falling tone’s certainty and the rising tone’s meaning of dependence, so it often conveys a felling of reservation:

- Do you smoke? - ëSometimes. (not in general)

- I’ve heard it’s a good film. - ëYes. (but I don’t completely agree)

The rise-fall is used to convey rather strong feelings of approval, disapproval or surprise:

- Isn’t the view lovely! - ^Yes.

The level nuclear tone is usually used to express a feeling of something routine, uninteresting or boring.

I’m afraid I can’t >manage it…

Mid-level tone is common in spontaneous speech and low-level tone is characteristic of reading poetry:

And >then ┊ my >heart ┊with   èpleasure feels…

And °dances ┊with the °daffodils|

An intonation pattern contains one nucleus and may contain other stressed or unstressed syllables, which normally precede or follow the nucleus. The part that extends from the first stressed syllable up to (but not including) the nucleus is called the head.  The unstressed syllables which precede the first stressed syllable of the head are called the pre-head, and any syllables between the nucleus and the end of the utterance are the tail.

The tone of a nucleus determines the pitch of the rest of the intonation pattern (that is the tail), thus after a falling tone the rest of the intonation pattern is at a low pitch. After a rising tone the rest moves in an upward direction:

 èNo ˌMary. \  æWell °Mary.

The nucleus and the tail form what is called the terminal tone.                                                 . Variations within the pre-nuclear part do not usually affect the grammatical meaning of the utterance, though they often reflect speaker’s attitude and phonetic styles. There are three common types of pre-nucleus - a Êdescending type, in which the pitch gradually descends (smoothly or in steps); an Ëascending type in which syllables form an ascending sequence; and a >level type, when all the syllables stay more or less on the same level.                                                   All parts of the intonation pattern can be combined in various ways, thus manifesting changes in meaning. The number of combinations is more than a hundred, but not all of them are really important, so in teaching we deal only with a very limited number of intonation patterns.                  Two more pitch parameters are pitch range and pitch level. Each speaker has his or her own normal pitch range: a top level which is the highest pitch normally used by the speaker, and a bottom level that the speaker’s pitch normally doesn’t go below. In ordinary speech the intonation tends to take place within the lower part of the speaker’s pitch range, but in situations where strong feelings are to be expressed it’s usual to make use of extra pitch height. For example, if we represent the pitch range by drawing two parallel lines showing the highest and lowest limits of the range, then a normal unemphatic “yes” could be diagrammed like this:

 

but a strong emphatic “yes” – like this:

 

So pitch range can be normal, wide and narrow. Narrow pitch range is associated with dull monotonous speech.

Another component of intonation is tempo. It implies the rate of the utterance and pausation. The rate can be normal, slow and fast. The parts of the utterance which are particularly important sound slower and those which bear additional, not significant information are pronounced at a faster rate. Utterances are split into smaller portions by means of pauses. By pause is meant a complete stop of phonation. Pauses differ according to their length. Usually three kinds of pauses are distinguished for teaching purposes:

• Short pauses which separate intonation groups within a phrase;
• Longer pauses which manifest the end of the phrase;
• Very long pauses (twice as long as the first type) are used to separate paragraphs.

Functionally pauses may be syntactic, emphatic and hesitation. Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases and intonation groups. Emphatic pauses serve to make prominent certain parts of the utterance. They are used to draw the listeners’ attention to what the speaker is going to say. Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain time to think over what to say next. They may be silent or filled.

Sometimes we can perceive a pause, when there is no stop of phonation at all. It may happen when pitch changes its direction; variations in the rate of the utterance, aspiration, etc. can also produce this effect.

Timbre or voice quality has not been thoroughly investigated yet. Phoneticians describe three types of voice quality settings which depend on the position of speech organs, the characteristics of the vocal cords and muscular tension. For the moment it is known that voice quality differences do contribute to a foreign accent and that they stem from both linguistic and sociolinguistic factors, but further research is needed on this phenomenon for more accurate information.

The changes of pitch, loudness and tempo are highly organized in any particular language. No matter how different the individual variations of these prosodic components are they are standard, so that all speakers of the language use them in similar ways under similar circumstances. These characteristics of intonation structure form the prosodic system of English.

 

                The Functional Aspect of English Intonation

 

Our further point will be the description of intonation on the functional level. Intonation is a powerful means of human intercommunication. One of the aims of communication is the exchange of information between people. The meaning of an English utterance derives not only from the grammatical structure, the lexical composition and the sound pattern. It also derives from variations of intonation or its prosodic parameters. We can see that intonation makes it easier for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey. The ways in which intonation does this are very complex, and there exist various points of view on the number and aims of intonation functions in a language.

P.Roach, for example, singles out the following intonation functions:

• grammatical
• accentual
• attitudinal
• discourse

Let’s have a closer look at them. First of all intonation serves to mark boundaries between phrases, clauses or sentences to indicate the grammatical subordination and to show the difference between questions, statements, commands, etc., so this function is called grammatical. The placement of the intonation-group boundary is important for differentiating the meaning of some ambiguous sentences, as in the example:

Those who  ësold ┊ˌquickly ˌmade a °profit|

ˈThose who ˈsold  ëquickly ┊ˌmade a °profit|

The intonation-group boundary can occur not only between words, but other grammatical units such as phrases and clauses, thus showing what is subordinate to what, as in the example:

The boys ┊ who weren’t punished ┊ were happy|

The boys who weren’t punished ┊ were happy| (only some boys)

Some skilful speakers use this ability of intonation as a special rhetorical device to attract the listeners’ attention or to hold the floor a bit longer.

The choice of nuclear tones also has grammatical significance, as it makes clear whether the person is telling something, asking or commanding. Basic tones are generally associated with certain communicative types of sentences. The falling tone is most common in statements, special questions, commands and exclamations. The rising tone is characteristic of non-final parts of statements, general questions, requests and warnings. The grammatical function here seems to overlap with the pragmatic function and depends on the speaker’s pragmatic aim. The choice of the nuclear tone can turn the command into a polite request:

ˈClose the ° door ┊°will you|

ˈClose the ° door ┊™will you|

a question into an exclamation:

 Isn’t she ™beautiful|

ˈIsn’t she   èbeautiful|

an apology into a request to repeat:

I’m °sorry|

I’m sorry|

a statement into a question (mostly in colloquial speech):

You    èdid it|

You did it|

As we’ve said already intonation helps to produce the effect of prominence, the placing of nucleus on a particular syllable marks out the word to which it belongs as the most important in the intonation group. It highlights the focus of information in the utterance indicating that it’s new (it’s called rheme) while the rest of the given information is called theme as it’s either known to the listener or can be easily understood from the context. Thus intonation can structure the information content of an intonation group or a phrase. This function is called accentual.

The location of the nucleus is of considerable linguistic importance. The most common position for it is on the last lexical word. In this case sentence stress is normal. But there are cases when a speaker may shift the nucleus to an earlier part of the intonation group for contrastive or emphatic purposes. In this position the stress is logical.

I’m ˈgoing to ˈleave °soon| (normal)

I’m ˈgoing to ° leave soon| (contrastive, meaning I’m going not to stay)

I   èam going to leave soon| (emphatic)

The position of the nucleus can also differentiate the actual meaning of the sentences, as in the example:

I have ˈplans to  ° leave| (=I’m planning to leave)

I have ° plans to leave| (=I have some plans that I have to leave)

By putting the stress on one particular word, the speaker shows that he is treating the word as the carrier of new information, and that the information of the other words is not new and can be easily understood from the situation.

The next function of intonation is the attitudinal one. Intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes and this adds a kind of special meaning to spoken language. The ability of intonation to express attitudes is associated with tones and pitch range features accompanied by voice quality and tempo and loudness changes. Some phoneticians make a distinction between the attitude towards what the speaker is saying and his/her emotional state.

Then there are also culture-specific norms of demonstrating emotions and attitudes. This makes it difficult for a foreign learner to interpret what he/she has heard and to use an appropriate intonation pattern in a certain situation. For example, Russian falling tone when used in English parting remarks may seem offensive or even insulting to native speakers of English, who usually use rising tone in saying good-bye. On the other hand English emotional High Falls or a wide pitch range may sound unnatural and pretentious to Russian speakers.

This function of intonation is closely connected with paralinguistics which includes facial expressions, gestures and body movements.

In the last few years the attention of phoneticians has been focused on a larger context in which sentences occur – that is discourse, in the structuring of which intonation plays a significant role. Generally intonation helps to focus the listeners’ attention on aspects of the message that are most important and to regulate the conversational behaviour of the participants.

As we’ve said already the placing of the nucleus on a certain syllable of one particular word signals that the information conveyed by it is most important and new. It’s clear that the placement of the nuclear tone is at least partly determined by the larger context. The chosen other parameters of the intonation group can also indicate whether they are used to present new information or refer to that which is already possessed by the listener, is common knowledge or part of the cultural background. Foreign learners of English, having in general less common ground or shared knowledge with the native speaker, might also have some difficulty in deciphering the message.

Another area of intonational discourse function is the regulation of conversational behaviour. Speakers use various intonation components to indicate to others that they have finished speaking, that another person is expected to speak, that a particular type of response is required, etc.