Publicistic (oratorial) style

The term ‘publicistic style’ is a very broad label which is used for different types of public speaking and oratorical activities: political, judicial, oratorical speeches, sermons, parliamentary debates, speeches at congresses, meetings, press conferences and election campaigns.

The basic aim of the public speaker is to persuade and to produce an emotional impact on the audience, to inspire and arouse enthusiasm in the listeners.

Among the techniques public speakers use to achieve the purpose, intonation seems to be of primary importance. The success of a speech-maker largely depends upon his ability to manipulate intonation and voice quality (timbre). The timbre is to be self-assured, dignified, concerned and personally involved.

The intonation adequate for political speech-making is characterized by the following features. Pitch ranges and levels vary greatly. Wide pitch ranges and a very high pitch level of the start of the initial intonation groups are especially typical of this style. In the pre-nuclear part the main patterns are:

(Low Pre-Head+) Stepping Head;

(Low Pre-Head+) Falling Head.

The heads are often broken due to extensive use of accidental rises to make an utterance more emphatic. The High Level or Medium Level Heads are also employed.

The nuclear tone of final intonation groups is generally the Low Fall; the High Fall is less common. As for the direction of the nuclear syllable pitch-movement in non-final intonation groups, it is more varied. Both simple and compound tunes are found there, namely, the Low Fall, the Low Rise, the Mid-Level and the Fall-Rise. The High Fall or the High Rise are rarely used for purposes of intra-phrasal coordination. It is interesting to note that the Low Rise and the Mid-Level are typical of more formal discourse, whereas the Fall-Rise is typical of less formal and more fluent discourse.

The speed of utterance depends on the degree of formality, the convention being that formal speech is usually slow, while less formal situations involve acceleration of speed. Variations in rhythm are very few; usually this kind of speaking is properly organized in terms of rhythmicality. Pausation and internal boundaries are explicable semantically and syntactically. Intonation groups tend to be short and as result pauses are numerous, ranging from brief to very long. A characteristic feature of this style is the use of the so-called ‘rhetorical silence’ which serves to bring out certain words and phrases. A speaker may pronounce a very long breath group and then suddenly interrupt it with a rhetorical silence. It attracts the attention and interest of the listener.

The following extract from a political speech will illustrate the use of publicistic style:

You can’t have in formed O PINION ¦ on this VITAL MATTER¦without being kept VERY much up to DATE¦ with the LATEST FACTS of DE FENCE. | Now what is WRONG ¦ with a coalition GOVERNMENT? | Of course you NEED a coalition GOVERNMENT ¦in time of CRISIS ¦ but the dreadful PART of a coa lition government, you KNOW ¦ is that to keep it A LIVE ¦you have to go in for one COMPROMISE ¦ after A NOTHER. | You have to see people sitting ROUND ¦ the CABINET room ¦ with different VIEWS ¦ and un less there can be a shifting of O PINION ¦ to wards some FORM of COMPROMISE ¦ be tween those different VIEWS ¦ the coa lition government FALLS ¦ and we be come a nother FRANCE.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14