1. Social norms of speech behaviour.
3. Extralinguistic factors – sex, age, social roles –
influencing the norms of speech behaviour.
10. The degree of formality and social status of the
characters, influence.
The more official the speech is, the more standardized
norms of pronunciation are used. The more colloquial
the speech is, the more often are the deviations from
standard norms. If a person wants to produce a certain
impression (highly educated person) he also resorts to
more literary norms of pronunciation. Hypocorrectness.
Estuary English (closer to Cockney) becomes more and
more common.
There are certain social roles which require the best
possible phonetic norms (lawyers, teachers).
RP has lost its social marker.
If [h] is initially dropped, [t] is stopped in intervocal
position, -ing is pronounced as [in], we are speaking
about estuary English. Younger people who want to
sound modern resort to this pronunciation.
It is typical of well-educated people with good cultural
background a great variability in the use of scales,
considerable pitch changes, the pronunciation of –ing as
[iŋ], wide ranges.
Low middle class – mainly use narrow ranges, wavy
scales, the pronunciation of –ing as [in].
Sex in speech behaviour. Women usually want to be
hypocorrect, they have fewer deviations from phonetic
norms. It may be explained by the fact that they have
more contact with children. Men want to sound
differently.
There are some vocalizations (mmm…er…). They are
more common with women (it means – I agree with
you). If a man says this, it means – I am listening to you.
The speech of women is emotionally more vivid, more
high-pitched. Women speak with a wider range than
children. Grown-up women speak quicker than anybody
else. Men use much simpler patterns.
Age. 3 types of RP:
1) Advanced RP – young people of certain classes
2) General RP – TV, radio
3) Conservative RP – older people.
Children more often use high scales with 1 stressed
word, use more rising tones, the range of their speech is
more narrow.
Younger people: chance [æ] – older [a:]
Newspaper [z] – younger
Forehead [fo:hed]
2. the degree of formality of the situation, the social
role of the speakers and the influence of these factors
on the choice of 10honetic means.
(the social role 1. 3. 10.)
5. formal and informal styles of speech, their
phonetic, lexical and grammatical peculiarities
9. the degree of formality and style-differentiating
means
Formal style:
The speaker sounds dispassionate. The characteristic
feature is the use of Falling Scale+ Low Fall (low rise),
normal or slow speed of utterance and regular rhythm.
Intonation groups tend to be short, duration of pauses
varies from medium to long. There are practically
contracted forms of form words though they may be
slightly reduced. We observe only quant reduction of
long vowels. Vocabulary is neutral. Full style. The
sentences tend to be rather long. No omissions or
elliptical sentences.
Informal style:
Entire range of intonational patterns existing in English.
Falling or stepping scales. Low falling or rising tones.
Increased pith height. Heterogeneous scales. Unexpected
placement of terminal tone. Short sense-groups. Absence
of stable pattern of tempo and rhythm but generally the
speed is quite fast. Hesitation pauses, hesitant drawls
(lengthening of sounds, syllables and words), unfinished
sense-groups. Fillers-in (well, you see, you know). All
possible contractions. Unstressed form words are
reduced in quality or it is complete reduction.
Vocabulary: words simple in structure. Any lex item
may be replaced by words like: what -do-you-call-it
which function as nouns. Collog voc.
Grammar: sentences are relatively short and their
structure is predominantly simple. Elliptical sentences,
omissions.
All the extralinguistic factors may lead to some change
in the phonetic realization:
1) Assimilation – good girl [gug g met] ,[l:‫פּ‬
min‫פּ‬ts] occurs in quick speech.
2) Allision [febr‫פּ‬ri].
3) Pre-consonantal cluster reduction (omission of
consonants) – [neks dei], [tel im].
4) Syllabification of sonants – [getl loŋ].
5) Vocalization of sonants – [tw‫ פּ‬raiv].
6) Smothering vowels – [fai‫ פּ‬pa‫]פּ‬.
7) Intrusive [r] – Asia [r] and Africa.
8) Reduction.
8.
Phonostylistic
and
style-differentiating
peculiarities of newspaper style
The aim of a newspaper text is to impart information.
8. Phonostylistic peculiarities of monologue and
dialogue
Oral speech may be classified as spontaneous. It may be
This aim presupposes that intonational peculiarities
should serve the aim. The information should be clear.
The following phonetic features:
1. The tempo of speech is moderate and usually stable.
Parenthetic elements are read quicker.
2. The division into sense-groups depends on the
meaning of the text. The division is very distinct, sensegroups are long (4-5 stressed syllables).
3. Scales are mainly descending. Tones are mainly
falling (they sound sharp and very categoric).
4. Singling out the communicative centers of sensegroups is achieved mainly by decentralized stressing
(each semantically important word is singled out).
5. Each sense-group may be separated by a pause. At
the end of a paragraph there is a rather long pause.
6. Medium range.
7. The tembre of speaker’s voice is unchangeable.
both monological and dialogical. Peculiarities of
monologues and dialogues:
1) A lot of elliptical sentences (usually the subject is
omitted).
2) A lot of non-finished sentences and repetitions.
Peculiarities of intonation in dialogues:
1) A great number of sense-groups, they are very
short (2 semantically important words). In monologues
there may be longer sense-groups.
2) Tones are falling. Complex tones are very
common.
3) The melodical contour is diverse. It may have
different movements. Wavy (heterogeneous) scales.
4) Medium range. If a passage is emphatic, the range
is wider.
5) Both centralized and decentralized stressing is
used. Decentralized stressing is used mainly in
monological elements.
6) The tempo of speech depends on the situation. If
we compare the reading of a written dialogical text to
actual dialogue – the reading is quicker. (When you
speak, you think about what you are going to say next.)
7) Lots of pauses. Sometimes the length of pauses is
equal to 50 %. Pauses may be of different character.
Hesitation pauses are most common (they precede some
information which the speaker thinks over).
8) The tembre of speech may be used artistically.