STYLISTIC USE OF INTONATION

 

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.

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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 invariants of 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.

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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

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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

Speech typology	Varieties of the language		Forms of communi­cation			Degree of prepa­redness		Number of partici­pants involved		Character of parti­cipants' relation­ship
Informa­tional style reyisters	rea­ding	spo­ken, spea­king	mo- no- lo-gue	dia­lo­gue	po-ly-lo-gue	pre­pa­red	spon­tane­ous	pub­lic	non­pub­lic	for­mal	in­for­mal
Educational information	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Press reporting and broad­casting	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	-

 

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.

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Spheres of discourse (Registers)	Varieties of the language and forms of communication
	Written variety of the language (Reading)				Spoken variety of the language (Speaking)
	Monologue		Dialogue		Monologue		Dialogue		Polylogue
	public	non­public	public	non­public	public	non­public	public	non­public	public	non­public
Educational information	Reading in class	Reading to a listener	Reading in class	—	Speaking public	Talking to a listener	Talking in class	Just talking	Round-table talks	—
Press reporting and broadcasting	Reading news coverage over the radio, TV; reading newspaper in class	Reading news­paper to a listener ...	—	—	Talking on events over the TV	Talking to a listener	Com­menting on the events, discus­sing them	Just discus­sing the events	Round-table talks of commen­tators	—

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.

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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.

 

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