Familiar (conversational) style

Here we are concerned with dominant features of relatively informal conversation between educated people (spontaneous dialogic texts).

Generally speaking, familiar (conversational) style, unlike other styles, will allow the occurrence of the entire range of intonation patterns existing in English. This is due to the fact that there seem no social restrictions on the range of emotions and attitudes which might be displayed in a conversational situation.

Relatively unexcited conversational situations are characterized by low pre-heads, falling or stepping heads and simple low falling or rising tones. Monosyllabic response utterances display standardized, narrow pitch patterns. Degrees of increasing intensity of excitement correlate with increased pitch height. As a result widened pitch patterns are typical of more excited situation. In this connection one should note the high proportion of intonation patterns with the high falling nuclear tone. The flow of conversation greatly depends on these patterns, as the High Fall implies, among other things, the effect of personal participation or involvement in the situation. It is extremely important for the participants in conversation to show an active interest in what is going on. Besides, mention should be made of the high frequency of compound tunes and heterogeneous heads. There is also the occasional completely unexpected placement of nuclear tone.

In spontaneous informal conversations there is a marked tendency for intonation to form a basic set of recurrent patterns. The nature of these patterns varies depending on such situational factors as the relationship of the speakers to each other, the chosen subject-matter, the fluency of an individual, his emotional state and so on.

Intonation groups may be any length within normal physiological limits. But there is a strong tendency to keep them short, to break up potentially lengthy intonation groups wherever possible. This tendency is carried to the extremes when the intensity of excitement is the greatest. For instance, in the attitudinal context of ‘irritation’ optional internal boundaries are introduced starting at clause level and continuing downwards, depending on the degree of irritation present, up to and including the morphemic level, cf

| We gave him | a lift | on Sunday|

| We | gave him |a lift | on Sunday|

| We | gave | him | a | lift | on | Sunday|

Informal conversation is characterized by the frequency of silence for purposes of contrastive pause, as opposed to its being required simply for breath-taking. Pauses are brief and there is a large number of cases when the speakers do not use pauses as very often they speak simultaneously, interrupt each other.

Pauses may occur randomly, not just at places of grammatical junction, e.g.

Oh ||… look, | you don’t seem to | realize > that || … that I like it ||

This style of speech is also characterized by the absence of stable pattern of tempo and rhythm. The tempo of colloquial speech is very varied. Generally, the natural speed of utterance is quite fast but the impression of ‘slowness’ may arise because of the great number of hesitation pauses both filled and non-filled.

One of the most essential distinctive features of informal conversation is the occurrence of hesitation phenomena. Eight types of events fall in this category:

(a) hesitation pauses, comprising unfilled (silent, voiceless), filled (voiced) and mixed varieties;

(b) hesitant drawls, i.e. lengthening of sounds, syllables and words;

(c) repetition of syllables and words;

(d) false starts to words, followed by self-corrections;

(e) restarting a construction or a sentence to conform more to what the speaker wants to say;

(f) unfinished intonation groups, often accompanied by reduced loudness of the voice;

(g) fillers-in, such as well, and, you see, you know, in fact, etc.;

(h) random vocalizations and such ‘phonetic oddities’ as clicks, trills, intakes of breath, etc.

Phonetics of conversation also involves attention to such phenomena as sound symbolism (eg brrr, bo, whoosh), artificial clearing of the throat or coughing for purposes of irony, various snorts and sniffs to communicate disgust and other attitudes.

It should be noted that all levels of analysis provide important information about the character of familiar style. At the grammatical level conversation displays the following characteristics. Sentence length is relatively short and the structure is mainly simple. However, the grammatical delimitation of sentences presents certain difficulties, especially due to the frequent absence of intersentence pauses and loose coordination. So the term ‘utterance’ is preferable here.

The most noticeable aspect of informal conversation is its vocabulary. Words tend to be very simple in structure; specialised terms and formal phraseology are generally avoided. The lack of precision in the matter of word-selection is not important, any lexical item may be replaced by words like what-do-you-call-it, you-know-what-I-mean, thingummy, which function as nouns.

The dialogue below provides a sample of spontaneous informal conversation:

A: You got a COLD?

B: NO, ¦ just a bit SNIFFY, ¦ cos I’m | I AM COLD ¦ and I’ll be all right once I’ve warmed UP. | Do I LOOK as though I’ve got a COLD?

A: No I thought you SOUNDED as if you were.

B: M.

A: Pull your CHAIR up close if you WANT. ¦ >Is it…

B: YES, ¦ I’ll be all right in a MINUTE ¦ it’s >just that I’m…

A: What have you GOT?

B: STUPID, ¦ I had ¦ ə ¦ about five thousand BOOKS | to take back to senate HOUSE YESTERDAY | and I got all the way through the COLLEGE ¦ >to ¦ where the CAR was ¦ at the parking meter at the OTHER end ¦ and I realized I’d left my COAT ¦ in my LOCKER¦ and I >just couldn’t…

A: M.

B: FACE ¦ going all the way BACK again ¦ with >this great… ¦ you know my ARMS were aching.

A: M.

B: And I >thought ¦ WELL ¦ I’ll get it on TUESDAY | it’s a bit SILLY, ¦ cos I NEED it.

A: M ¦ it’s gone very COLD ¦ HASN’T it?

B: ^M

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14