The Invariant of Phonostylistic Characteristics of Publicistic Oratorial Speeches

 

 

Timbre		dignified, self-assured, concerned and personally in­volved; a variety of attitudinal and modal expressions in the voice
Delimitation		phonopassages — phrases — intonation groups
Style-mar­king pro­sodic featu­res	Loudness	enormously increased, ranging from forte to fortissimo; sometimes instances of diminished loudness are ob­served to bring out words and phrases of paramount importance and produce certain psychological effect
	Ranges and levels	greatly varied; the predominant use of wide ranges within the phonopassage; a very high level of the start of the initial intonation groups
	Rate	moderately slow; the public speaker slows down to bring out communicatively important centres; less important information entails acceleration of speed
	Pauses	definitely long between the passages; a great number of breath-taking pauses; pausation is commonly explicable in semantic and syntactic terms; interpausal seg­ments are rather short, thus phrases may be overload­ed by pauses of different length; another characteristic feature of this register is a rather frequent stop of phonation before the emphatic semantic centre; it serves as a means of bringing out words and phrases; voice­less hesitation pauses occur to produce the effect of apparent spontaneity, "rhetorical silence" is often used to exert influence on the public
	Rhythm	properly organized; within the speech segments rhythmic groups have recurrent alternation, which produces the acoustic effect of strict rhythmicality
The ac­centua­tion of seman­tic cen­tres	Terminal tones	mostly emphatic, especially on emotionally under­lined semantic centres; in non-final intonational groups falling-rising tones are frequent; terminal tones are contrasted to distinguish between the formal segments of speech and less formal ones (illustrations, examples, jokes, and so on)
	Pre-nuclear patterns	common use of the descending sequence of stressed syllables; a large proportion of falling and stepping heads, frequently broken by accidental rises to in­crease the emphasis; another common "rhetorical trick" is the tonal subordination when semantically and communicatively important intonation groups contrast with their neighbours by all prosodic features; so the high level head may be alternated with the low level head, especially in enumerations
	The contrast between accented and unaccented segments	not great
	Paralinguistic features	a great number of paralinguistic effects, kinesic components — facial expressions, bodily move­ments, gestures — subjected to the main purpose of the publicistic discourse: to influence the audi­ence, involve it. into the talk and to exert the expected response from it

8—3483

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Publicistic speakers are usually very enthusiastic about what they say and how they say, so they may go to extremes by enormously increasing the loudness and alternate it with whis­per or by pronouncing very long breath groups and suddenly in­terrupt the phonation by using the rhetorical silence. These and other prosodic contrasts produce great effects and captivate the attention and interest of the listener.

The greatest single stylistic characteristic of publicistic speeches is the large amount of parallelisms on any level, pro­sodic features including.

All the above-mentioned general characteristics serve to pro­duce a complex vocal effect called "oration", designed to make the listeners respond to the publicistic speech-maker. So a clear phonological distinction can be drawn between this intonational style and others in terms of markedly different prosodic struc­tures but there is no clear boundary between certain types of lec­tures, publicistic speeches and declamatory performances.

We have tried to describe here only one register of the style. There are certainly other spheres of discourse — spontaneous speeches at the meetings, debates, theatrical oratorial procedures at parties, anniversaries and so on. They will certainly differ greatly on the prosodic level, but the volitional function of into­nation, expressed by the contrast of all prosodic parameters, will always be in the foreground and mark the publicistic style.

 

Declamatory Style

This intonational style is also called by some as "artistic, ac­quired or stage". As we see from these labels, the scholars sug­gest that this is a highly emotional and expressive intonational style, that is why it needs special training. Attitudinal, volitional and intellectual functions of intonation are of primary impor­tance here and serve to appeal to the mind, will and feelings of the listener. Most commonly it is performed through all sorts of image-bearing devices which require rehearsing and professional skills. This intonational style can be heard on the stage, on the screen, in a TV studio or in a classroom during verse speaking and prose readings and recitations. Thus we see that it is always a written form of the language read aloud or recited.

However, it should be claimed here, that it is a very hard la­

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bour to give a detailed description of the stage speech in this book as it is the stylization of all speech styles, especially conversation­al. Conversations on the stage tend to be meant quite familiar, but, addressed to the spectators, they produce an exaggerated, most striking elements especially in the fields of such prosodic pa­rameters as loudness, rate and range and could be immediately spotted by listeners as "stage speech" characteristics.

The prosodic organization of such texts will vary greatly, de­pending on the type of the theatrical performance — whether it is a tragedy, drama or comedy — and, of course, on the social factors — the social and cultural background of the play charac­ters, their relationship, extralinguistic context, and so on.

Acting is a two-way conversation, players respond very di­rectly and promptly to the "feedback" they get from the audi­ence; the "feedback" in their case being almost certainly commu­nal, collective, non-verbal language. Methods of achieving, stim­ulating and maintaining this "conversation" with their audience must inevitably be the mainspring of the actors' "training".

To feel, to know, even to express the contents of their drama is a wasted and futile activity if it is not conveyed to other par­ticipants — the audience. Distancing, posture, gesture, facial ex­pression and timing — all these facets of their art are as impor­tant as the delivery of words themselves.

It is a vast area for investigation and description but we would like here to restrict the field of analysis to the types of the register needed in class for would-be teachers of English. Obvi­ously they are prose reading and verse recitations. The latter was described above under the heading "Rhythm".

So we confine ourselves to the prose reading here. We think we have to be clear that to the declamatory style reading we re­fer only certain literary (fiction) texts appealing to the readers. The reading of informational and scientific prose has been al­ready described in the previous sections of the chapter. Though there are many things in common, as any reading aloud sug­gests, the predominance of emotional function in the artistic reading separates this kind of reading from others in a funda­mental way.

The declamatory reading displays a great variety of intonation property as regards to the types of written texts. There is almost endless variety in the way writers express themselves; but no matter how pleasurable the way of writing may be, meaning al­

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ways comes first. In each case style, the way something has been written, must be adapted to suit the subject matter.

It is common knowledge that prose, which describes an ac­tion or a series of actions to tell a story, is called narrative, e.g.

Though it was nearly midnight when Andrew reached Bryngow-er, he found Joe Morgan waiting for him, walking up and down with short steps between the closed surgery and the entrance to the house. [A. J. Cronin. The Citadel)

The prose is descriptive when scenes, objects, people, or even a person's feelings are described in such a way that we can imagine them vividly. In good descriptive writing an author builds up a picture in words in much the same way as an artist paints a landscape or a portrait, e.g.

We got out at Sonning and went for a walk round the village. It is a most fairy-like little nook on the whole river. It is most like a stage village that one builds of bricks and mortar. Every house is smothered in roses and now, in early June, they were bursting forth in clouds of dainty splendour... (Jerome K. Jerome. Three Men in a Boat)

In order to appreciate a prose passage it is not enough to un­derstand its meaning: it is necessary to grasp the author's inten­tions and the means he has employed to fulfil them. In a sense good narrative and descriptive prose have much in common with poetry. The writer need not always have an audience in mind. His aim is to tell a story or describe a scene as well as he can. The "devices" that occur arise from the prose itself and are, as it were, coincidental with this main purpose.

It is desirable, of course, before reading aloud to appreciate the written text. For this one should firstly read the passage carefully without worrying over the meaning of a few difficult words. Then, while reading it, pay close attention to the se­quence of events described, or to the stages which lead to the main event. See if the writer gives reasons why the event or events described occurred. When you have read a prose passage carefully you should be in a position to pause a little bit and try to realize general meaning, a detailed meaning and be able to define the intentions of the writer and state why you have liked or disliked what you have read.

What makes a story a pleasure to read is usually the writer's

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way of telling it. The way scenes and people are described, the way the characters think, talk or act are quite as important as the events themselves and contribute largely to our enjoyment. When appreciating the prose it is necessary to understand how these qualities or devices help a story to develop and how they add colour to it.

One should also bear in mind that any story is a unity, though divided into passages. It is very important to understand how pieces of narratives are put together. A reader responds to a text, its linguistic clues (internal evidence), but also to situational clues (external evidence). In responding to a text a reader usually takes into account all he knows of the environment: what is going on, who is involved as well as what part language is playing.

Evidently the next step will be to delimit the text, to break it into phonopassages that may not coincide with the written pas­sages. Then the passage should be split into phrases, the latter into intonation groups. The most necessary procedure, of course, is to underline the communicative centres in each group and think what prosodic features are preferable for expressing the meaning and the emphasis.

A writer helps his characters to come alive not only by de­scribing the way they act but by letting us hear them speak. Thus a continuous prose is interrupted by a dialogue. Effective dialogue enables the reader to feel that he is actually witnessing what is going on.

Dialogic texts are author's reproduction of actual conversa­tion and in reading aloud a reader should bear in mind the char­acters of the speakers, their social background and the atmos­phere, the environment, in which the conversation takes place.

The author sometimes provides us with clues as to how the speech of the characters should be interpreted, e.g.

He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move.

"What's the matter, Schatz?"

'I've got a headache."

"You'd better go back to bed."

"No, I'm all right."

"You go to bed. I'll see you when I'm dressed."

But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the

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fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I knew he had a fever.

"You go up to bed," I said, "you're sick."

"I'm all right," he said.

When the doctor came he took the boy's temperature. (E. Hemingway. A Day's Wait)

The conversations are strikingly different in. style and for their characteristics see corresponding sections of the chapter. We must mention here, however, that most literary texts com­prise descriptions, narrations and dialogues.

The experimental data of the research works on the declama­tory reading (26, 43) allow us to say that its prosodic organiza­tion depends on the type of the literary text — descriptive, narra­tive, dialogue; on the character of the described events, schemes and objects (humorous, tragic, romantic, dreamy, imaginative and so on) and of course on the skills of the reader. But it is al­ways clearly marked and distinguished by its expressiveness, personal involvement on the part of the author, by the empha­sis, by the entire range of prosodic and paralinguistic effects and it is all felt through the skilful reading (see Table 11).

We would like to comment on the use of terminal tones in initial and non-final intonation groups. The views of phoneti­cians differ here. G.Pinayeva, for example, claims that the Low Rise now loses its connective function and gains the emphatic one. Subsequently the falling-rising tone becomes more and more connective (26).

Other scholars write that the most typical nuclear tone used for the connection in non-final groups is the non-final low falling or the midlevel tone. Evidently the solution lies in new experi­ments and the analysis of the experimental data. We will try to suggest, however, that the choice of the terminal tone in non-fi­nal intonation groups is determined by the emphasis. The ex­pressive reading suggests the Low or Medium Fall rather than the rising tones:

^↘As it was 'nearly ˎmidnight || when ^↘Andrew 'reached ˎBryngower... || At the ^↘sight of him || the ^↘burly 'driller's 'face ex'pressed reˎlief.

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