David Brazil

CHAPTER 1: A PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE TONE UNIT

Intonation is associated with pitch variations of the speaking voice. Pitch varies continuously
from the moment anyone begins speaking to the moment they end. Not all the variations have
the same kind of communicative significance. The variation has to do with the speaker having
made a choice from a set of oppositions that reside in the language system, knowledge of which
we must assume the speaker shares with his hearer. The allocation of prominence is the
consequence of a speaker’s decision with respect to a binary prominent/non-prominent
choice. The communicative value of any choice is defined negatively by reference to the other
options available.
The stretch of language that carries the systematically-opposed features of intonation is the
tone unit. A tone unit is a subdivision of speech within which the speaker makes all the choices
at a phonological level. Each tone unit has either one or two syllables that a hearer can
recognise as more empathic than the others, i.e. they have prominence, which distinguishes
them from all other syllables. Prominence is a feature which speakers can vary voluntarily and
the decision is a meaningful one. The speaker has the freedom to vary, not the location but the
number of prominent syllables. This freedom is limited to assigning either one or two
prominent syllables.
The last prominent syllable of a tone unit is called tonic syllable. In that syllable, a choice is
made from a set of significant pitch movements or tones. The syllable that precedes the tonic
one is called onset syllable. It differs from the tonic one because it does not have pitch-
movement associated with it. The onset syllable is the place of operation of a pitch-level choice.
High, mid and low are levels at which the onset may be pitched. The choice associated with the
onset syllable is referred to as key and that associated with the tonic syllable as termination.
(Proclitic segment) Tonic segment (enclitic segment)
Neither proclitic nor enclitic segments contain prominent syllables. The tonic syllable is the
indispensable constituent of the tonic segment.

Prominence and stress

Stress is the ‘word accent’ shown in dictionaries, it can be primary (‘) or secondary (,) and it is
related to prominence. There is no way of predicting whether any syllable will have prominence
or not: the allocation of prominence to a word is the result of a speaker-decision which resulted
in the choice of a particular lexical item. The location of prominent syllables is adjusted to bring
them as near the beginning and end of the tonic segment as possible.

CHAPTER 2: PROMINENCE
Prominence determines the beginning and the end of the tonic segment and establishes the
domain of three variables: key, termination and tone. The distribution of prominence is an act
of sense selection by part of the speaker.

Selection: paradigmatic/syntagmatic
Selection is a binary choice between prominence and non prominence.
A ‘paradigm’ is a vertical axis containing a set of options.
Existential paradigm: a set of possibilities actually available in a given situation. It depends
upon the here-and-now state of understanding between the producer and the recipient of the
message. The options from which the speaker can choose are incompatible with each other but
belong to the same sense dimension. E.g. I want a blue/red/green pair of shorts. The words
comprising the existential paradigm are a subset of those comprising the general one.

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General paradigm: is the set of possibilities which are inherent in the language system from
which the speaker can choose.
The two paradigms can coincide when there is no possibility of choice in the existential
paradigm because there is none in the general. The repetition of non-selective material is
usually made non-prominent. Because there is a shared understanding, no selection is
involved. Shared knowledge includes cases of culture wide acquaintance /əkweɪntəns/with
particular sequences of names or brands.

Context of interaction/situation: The context comprises the immediate features in which an

expression is uttered, such as time, location, hearer and preceding discourse. Each tone unit is
conceived as occurring at a specific time and place. The here-and-now of the utterance
provides for each tone unit a unique conversational setting. What makes the setting unique is
that each step forward along the time continuum includes awareness of what has been said
before. The state of understanding comprises the very long-standing elements, the newly-
created, and never-to-be-repeated elements that originate in the unfolding discourse.

Projection: The speaker’s intonation projects a certain context of interaction. The speaker
decides what projection to make. If there are failures to hear properly, these may cause the
respondent to project a different context of interaction. When a speaker projects a context, he
can either speak according to the existing situation or he can exploit the system, presenting
shared information as new, or new as shared. To exploit the system is to contradict the context
of situation. Its purpose is to highlight a particular idea. The distribution of prominence depends
upon speakers’ decisions.
Prominence is distributed by speakers, while guessing is a hearer’s activity. Even if the speaker
were constantly trying to fit his behaviour to the expectations of the hearer, there could be no
guarantee of perfect meshing all the time.
All intonation choices are available for exploitation. The possibility of exploitation allows the
speaker to project any context of interaction, including some that have no kind of “reality”.

Sense selection: The existential paradigm comprises only those whose values are
incompatible with each other. When, in a given context of interaction, the choice between a
pair of equally available words does not constitute a sense choice, a relationship of existential
synonymy holds between them. Existential synonymies project identical contexts of interaction
only in those situations where they are recognised as alternative labels for the same individual.
By choosing one word rather than the other the speaker projects an understanding that he and
his hearer are members of a group socially, geographically or historically defined who use this
word rather than the other. Choices are understood to be made between modes of expression
(related to register) rather than between senses expressed.

Distribution of prominence in words:

Prominent syllables serve to give prominence to a word and prominent words realise sense
selections.
An item is selective when there is sense selection from an existential paradigm, and it is non-
selective when the speaker exploits the system.

Syntagmatic organization: expressions formed by more than one word which hold a close
relationship with each other. They are a unit selected from a paradigm. When you make a
syntagmatic choice, you join words that are horizontally organized as a unit and consider them
as a whole.

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 CHAPTER 3: KEY AND TERMINATION
In tone units of both minimal and extended type pitch-level, speakers can vary the height of the
pitch.
KEY: the pitch height /haɪt/choice associated with the onset syllable.
TERMINATION: the pitch height choice associated with the tonic syllable.

HIGH KEY
1) Contrastive value: by associating high key with a particular onset segment, the speaker
projects a context of interaction in which the existential paradigm has two members.
The one selected is not the expected one. It projects a binary opposition upon the
existential paradigm and explicitly denies the expected alternative. A version with high
key takes into account some kind of expectation. Although high key could occur in
circumstances where it could be interpretable as an indication of surprise, a wide range
of reactions are also possible: pleasure, annoyance, alarm (LOCAL MEANING).
2) Particularizing -a special kind of contrast: A set of existentially possible alternatives
taken as a unit. The existential opposition is between an item and all other available
items.
MID KEY
1) Additive meaning: With mid-key, the utterance gives two separate pieces of
information and the choice is made among equal possibilities present in the existential
paradigm. Mid-key expresses NO special expectations on the part of the hearer, its
function is only to add one piece of information to the other.

LOW KEY
1) Existentially equivalence: A segment having low key is presented as being existentially
equivalent to the previous one. The information presented has the same meaning as the
piece of information which comes immediately before, or sometimes, after it. Two
situations in which low key is used:
- With rising tone: to project an equivalence not necessarily yet known to the hearer. It
indicates a cause-effect relationship. Because low key means equivalence, the
constituents can be reversed: effect-cause.
- With falling tone: to acknowledge a self-evident equivalence.
2) When a speaker says an ‘aside’. The speaker seems to be addressing himself rather
than his hearers.

Comparing mid and high key: What distinguishes a mid key version from a high key version is
the absence of any implied expectation.
High key: a) What a pity it wasn’t John b) It was H John
The difference is between asserting that something IS the case (mid key) and denying that it IS
NOT (high key)

High and mid key with “yes” and “no” or items that serve as existential synonyms for them:
Mid key yes-no: it associates the speaker with the polarity of the preceding speaker’s
utterance. That is whatever you say, I associate myself to what I know you mean.
I expect he’s late. b) Yes (= So do I) Do you understand? b) Yes (=I do)
High key with yes-no: The first speaker indicates his expectation of the polarity choice and the
second speaker selects the other (the second speaker contradicts the first speaker):
So, you’re not coming. b)Yes(=I AM coming)High key yes has the communicative value of not
no.

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x) Do you understand? y) No (=not yes) High key no has the communicative value of not yes.

Pitch level choices: key and termination

Termination: is a means whereby one speaker restricts another’s freedom of choice. When
speakers are confronted by the need to select a key, they may be influenced in their choice by
the previous speaker’s termination choice. By choosing high or mid termination, a speaker
indicates an expectation that a responding answer will have such expectations realised. The
hearer is expected to obey the “concord rule”. The listener has two options: to adjudicate or to
concur /kənˈkɜː/.
Concord/ˈkɒŋkɔːd/: The expected termination/key. Concord breaking: a discrepancy
between the ways the two parties assess the context of interaction.
Brazil introduces the concepts of concurrence and adjudication, mainly with yes-no questions:
Mid termination expects concurrence/kənˈkʌrəns/: yes-no questions with mid termination
are an invitation to confirm that the polarity is correct. They should be interpreted as an
invitation to confirm a polarity which is already expected and that the concurring mid key
will fulfill those expectations. Mid key responses are interpreted as a passive acceptance.
High termination invites adjudication: High termination is an invitation to produce an
independent response. There are no expectations about the polarity to be used. High
termination is conceived as an independent activity: the speaker can say yes or no.
To decide is to be “active”; to go along with others’ assessment of the situation is to be
“passive”.
Expectations are not always fulfilled. The constraints inherent in one speaker’s termination
choice may be overridden (not followed) by the next speaker.
The second speaker may avoid the adjudication or concurring-stance he’s invited to adopt by
realizing the expected key choice in a dummy item -one that is incapable of realising sense
selection (well, mhm) and then make an independent choice in the next tone unit. This satisfies
the expectation of termination/key concord between speakers but refuses concurrence.
a) I couldn’t go out / could (M) I? b) Well (M)/ yes (H)/ I think you could (H)

Questions with high key and termination: An improbable answer is expected.

Questions with mid key and termination: a straight forward request for information.

High termination expects high key

Mid termination expects mid key
Low termination PERMITS a choice of high, mid or low key
CHAPTER 4: TONE: PROCLAIMING AND REFERRING
Pitch movement (whether your voice goes up or down as you speak) begins at every tonic
syllable and consists of five tones: the fall, the fall-rise, the rise, the rise-fall and the level
tone. The speaker may choose any one of them. If he does not choose one, the tone unit will
sound incomplete.

The communicative significance of the choices the speaker makes

A particular communicative value is associated with each of the tones. The significance of a
choice depends on other factors in the context of interaction: the meaning that any one of the
five tones contributes is the same, regardless of its environment.
Referring tone: The constituent that has a fall-rise is already in play: it is what we are talking
about. The unit having the `fall-rise´ contains what has been raised already.

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Proclaiming tone: The constituent that has a fall is something freshly introduced into the
conversation. This unit contains the news.

Speaker-hearer convergence:

The intersecting circles represent the world views of speaker and hearer at the moment of
utterance of a tone unit. The shaded area is the common ground they share.
The tone unit having a referring tone (r) is presented by the speaker as being already present
in the common ground. When the speaker associates a stretch of his discourse with a referring
tone, he indicates that this part of the discourse will not alter the state of speaker/hearer
convergence.
The tone unit having a proclaiming tone (p) is presented as not yet present in the common
ground. By using this tone, the speaker declares his expectation that this will increase the area
of convergence. The speaker tells the hearer something he did not already know.
The state of convergence is an aspect of the context of interaction, to which all intonation
choices are related. The context of interaction is a product of the ongoing conversation.
Referring tones can be seen to make retrospective reference to elements in the recorded text.
But what a speaker may take as shared is not limited to what has been previously mentioned:
Other examples include:
1) A news announcer (while beginning the report)The speaker assumes that listeners will
be expecting a reference to the event and that they will also know where it takes place.
By using a referring tone, he relates to a taken-for-granted focus of interest before
telling hearers what they are assumed not to know.
2) Beginning of a talk: The speaker assumes that the audience knows what he will be
talking about.
3) Conversational openers: The R tone is used because what is physically apparent to the
hearer will not usually be stated unless its status as part of the shared world is
acknowledged by the choice of a referring tone.

The significance of the proclaiming tone is that, by producing it, the speaker enlarges the
hearer´s world view; with the referring tone, the speaker recognises that he is saying nothing
that will constitute a step forward.

Another way of conceptualizing the significance of the P/R opposition:

- Referring tone: the two participants are in exactly the same state of convergence. The
tone unit can be represented as a non-progressive loop: an excursion into the common
ground -which ends where it began.

- Proclaiming tone: information that will change the hearer's world view. It is
represented as a progressive loop: what is said constitutes a movement towards
greater convergence, a step forward in the information flow.

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The whole utterance can be seen as ‘loops’ which represent shared understanding that the
speaker takes for granted and increments which add up to what the listener is told.

The social significance of tone choice:

Adverbials like actually and frankly occur without prominence, because there is no sense
selection. If someone uses frankly or actually, it would be very unusual for anyone to fill the slot
with anything that had the sense ‘not actually’ or ‘not frankly’.
There is a tendency to choose a referring tone for adverbials: speakers present them as
something understood.
The social significance of tone choice is the social connotation deriving from the choice of
tone: an assumption of solidarity between the speaker and the hearer. It is related to the
concepts of togetherness (R) and separateness (P).
Togetherness: shows intimacy or solidarity between the speakers. Everyone else is excluded
from the area of convergence: the participants we, exclude the non-participants they. A tone
unit with an R tone is projected on behalf of the participating we (speaker-hearer). The use of a
referring tone in an adverbial would signify that a here-and-now opposition between the
proclaimed item and others was already appreciated by the hearer: it's an opposition that we
both know.
Separateness: the speaker locates himself outside the area of convergence. He presents himself
as having an independent viewpoint. A tone unit with P tone is projected on behalf of the
speaking I. The use of a proclaiming tone in an adverbial, would signify that a here-and-now
opposition between the proclaimed item and others was not yet appreciated by the hearer:
it's an opposition that only the I (speaker) knows.

Sense selection: chooses among other options.

Social selection: separateness (p) and togetherness (r)
The social component of meaning is ALWAYS present, the component attributable to a choice of
sense is not. There is only social selection reflected in the choice of tone.

In informal conversation, phrases like actually and frankly occur characteristically with a
referring tone and serve principally to insinuate intimacy or solidarity into the speaker/hearer
relationship. Sometimes, there is also a suggestion of confidentiality or conspiracy. Other items
generally used in this way are: personally, really, to tell you the truth.
Items like of course, in fact, indeed, I can assure you, usually occur with a proclaiming tone.
When prominent, they serve to project that the speaker locates himself outside the area of
convergence: having an independent viewpoint before going on to make his assertion.

CHAPTER 5: TONE: DOMINANCE AND CONTROL

Brazil analyses non-symmetrical encounters where the occupant of the dominant role is easily
recognised. In non-symmetrical encounters the distribution of conversational rights is

6
unequal. Typically, the dominant party has the right (and/or the obligation) to ask questions,
while the subordinate party has a restricted right to ask questions and talk. The dominant
speaker has the choice of two courses of action: p or p+ when he wishes to proclaim and r or r+
when he wishes to refer. The non-dominant speaker must only use a p or an r tone.
By the use of plus tones, the dominant speaker is able to make a meaning distinction that the
non-dominant speaker cannot make.
In informal conversations, there is a competition for dominance. If the plus tones belong
exclusively to the repertoire of the dominant speaker, the choice of a plus tone serves to project
a context of interaction in which the speaker is dominant. The moment in which the speaker
uses a plus tone, he expresses his wish to become the dominant speaker.
When an interpretation applies to one particular instance, Brazil talks about local meaning or
value.
The r+ tone: Both r and r+ tones project an assumption of common ground. With r+ the
speaker superimposes the increment of the communicative value DOMINANCE. Also, r+ is used
to give directions, meaning ‘If you listen to me, I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
When a speaker uses a plus tone, he openly shows his expectation that his status as controller
of the discourse will be recognised for the time being. He sets the expectation that the listener
will hear him until he has finished.

Two situations of assumption of dominance which achieve two different effects:

- Discourse control 1: dominance manifested as a pressure upon the other party not
to speak. This is the continuative use of rise tone. The speaker is underlining the
expectation that he will be allowed to continue to speak without interruptions. This is
the case of storytelling, anecdotes and counting. Incompleteness: local meaning.
Sometimes you want to keep on talking although the idea is complete. The speaker
states his intention of starting another utterance by underlying his present status as
controller of the discourse.
- Discourse control 2: dominance manifested as a pressure upon the other party TO
speak. It is an attempt to exercise control over what the other person does. The speaker
marks his role as the person in control: he determines what happens next at the same
time as he makes a request for information.

Questions asked for the benefit of the speaker or for the benefit of the hearer:
● R BENEFIT OF THE HEARER
/r have you finished?/ Meaning: Can I help you to a second serving?
● R + BENEFIT OF THE SPEAKER
/r+ have you finished?/ Meaning: I’ve been waiting for you.

● Reminding information r+: When a speaker assumes that a piece of information needs
to be reactivated.

P+ tone (relatively uncommon): With p+ tone, the speaker is heard as proclaiming the fact at
the very moment of discovering it for himself. The information that is proclaimed is supposed to
be new for the hearer but also for the speaker. The use of p+ indicates the speaker’s intention to
change the state of the worlds of both speaker and hearer. The choice of the dominant tone
manifests the speaker’s intention of controlling the discourse: he registers his own observation
and simultaneously indicates that he expects no feedback of any kind. It can be paraphrased as:
`What you have just said, or done, astonishes me’ that is to say, it changes my world view.

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 CHAPTER 6. TONES: QUESTIONS AND SOCIAL ELICITATIONS
Uses of p/r+ in connection to the interrogative function and their significance (declarative
mood questions, yes-no questions and information questions):
R+: “Am I right in assuming X? Please, confirm. (Checking assumptions: I have an idea in mind
and wish to have my assumptions confirmed with respect to a truth which is presented as
having been negotiated.)
P: I do not know whether you do or don’t X. Please, tell me. (Genuine question: without an
answer in mind, asks to know the answer.) It projects a wish that the respondent should
provide a selection from a so-far unnegotiated set.

SOCIAL ELICITATIONS: the intended effect is a social bridge-building. They are used for the
sake of social interactions. They will customarily /kʌstəmərəli/ have a referring tone, as it
insinuates togetherness. Questions about people’s well-being, friendly instructions are
instances of phatic questions. E.g. /r+ how are you?/ is part of the greeting, and when you are
asked “how are you?”, you say “fine, thanks. And you?” and you don’t give details about how you
are.
Elicitations serve to remove uncertainty in the mind of the speaker:
- P: seek to have your world view modified by the hearer,
- R+: to have confirmation that his present world view coincides with that of the hearer.
Elicitations are not used in the same way in English and in Spanish, but in Spanish we use the
tones the other way around.

CHAPTER 8: ORIENTATION

Two types of orientation:

Direct orientation: The speaker assumes a particular context of interaction and makes tone
choices accordingly.
Oblique orientation: Speakers present their utterances as uninterpreted entities. They opt out
of evaluating the state of speaker/hearer convergence prior to producing their utterance. The
speaker does not take into account what has been said before in order to make his choices. The
tones used are level and falling.

While reading, the speaker may approach the task in two different ways:
- Read aloud (DIRECT ORIENTATION): the speaker makes contextual projections. Read
aloud is to adopt a direct, listener-sensitive stance, interpreting the text as if you were
the originator of the message. A situated communicative event.
- Read out (OBLIQUE ORIENTATION): the speaker reads what is written on the paper
without taking responsibility for what is printed. The stretches of language are
projected as neutral. The speaker does not presume that the linguistic sample has any
kind of communicative significance in anyone’s world, except as an uninterpreted entity.
He does not take any responsibility for the truth of any assertion he may make.
Language as sample.
The P tone plays a role in 2 different systems:
It occurs in direct orientation in the tonic segments which contain information that is
presented as world-changing for the hearer.
It occurs in oblique orientation to signal that the utterance being read by the speaker is “what
is written here”. Brazil suggests two reasons why speakers produce oblique utterances,
namely: 1) production of formulaic or ritualistic language and 2) difficulties in utterance
planning.

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Uses of oblique orientation: quoting, verbal planning, showing common ground, recitation of
prayers and as a technique for eliciting contributions from students.
Level tones occur when tone units boundaries do not fall at points of potential completion.
Falling tones occur when they fall at points of potential completion.
Decisions are made on the basis of the speaker’s perception/understanding of the linguistic
organization of the item, not on the assumption about how the utterance fits with a context of
interaction.

Ritual as oblique orientation:

Pre-coded speech activity: certain language formulae which accompany repeated business are
frequently spoken in a way which absolves the speaker from any responsibility for here-and-
now appropriateness to a changing state of convergence. This is not a newly created locution,
there is a predetermined script.
The public recitation of prayers: the allocation of prominence is in content words. Since there
is no apprehension of a context of interaction to guide the decisions, the speaker may suppose
that prominence is assigned in a more or less automatic way to the open class words.

Oblique orientation - Level tones: In classroom interactions, the teacher uses the level tone to
leave an idea incomplete for the students to complete it.
Orientation and verbal planning: people shift to oblique orientation when they are having
problems planning their speech.

BROAD AND NARROW FOCUS - WELLS

The concentration of attention on a particular part of the message is called focus. When we
utter a stretch of speech, we can either bring everything into focus (broad focus), or we can
focus selectively on one part (narrow focus). The part of the stretch of speech that is placed
in focus is called the focus domain. The nucleus marks the end of a focus domain.
To give a stretch of speech broad focus, we use neutral tonicity. The nucleus goes on the last
lexical item: What's going on here? Selena had a heart attack.
In narrow focus, the nucleus goes on the last lexical item within the focus domain: What did
Mary bring? She brought the wine.

STUDYING MEANING - GRIFFITHS

Semantics and pragmatics are the two main branches of the linguistic study of meaning.
Semantics is the study of the knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language up to the
level of sentence meaning. Pragmatics is concerned with the interaction of semantic knowledge
with our knowledge of the world, taking into account the context of use.
Denote: to label the connections between meaningful items of language and aspects of the
world. An expression is any meaningful language unit or sequence of meaningful units.
Communication requires active collaboration on the addressee. He has the task of trying to
guess what the sender intends to convey, and as soon as the sender’s intention has been
recognised, the message has been communicated. The sender’s task is to judge what needs to be
written or said to enable the addressee to recognise what the sender wants to communicate.
There are three consequences of this:
• There are different ways of communicating the same message (and the same string of words
can convey different messages)
• The active participation of the addressee sometimes allows a lot to be communicated with just
a little having been said or written.

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• Mistakes are possible. In face-to-face interactions the speaker can monitor the listener’s
reactions.

Pragmatics distinguished from semantics

Utterances and sentences: The things that have meaning are utterances. Each utterance is
unique, having been produced by a particular sender in a specific situation. Because they are
tied to a sender and a time, utterances can never be repeated. Utterances are interpreted in
context. The abstract linguistic object on which an utterance is based is a sentence.

Three stages of interpretation: literal meaning, explicature and implicature

If you are dealing with meaning and there is no context to consider, then you are doing
semantics, but if there is a context to be brought into consideration, then you are engaged in
pragmatics.
The first stage is a semantic one: literal meaning. The others are two kinds of pragmatic
interpretation: explicature and implicature.
The literal meaning of a sentence is based on just the semantic information that you have from
your knowledge of English. No consideration of context is involved.
An explicature is the interpretation of an utterance, using contextual information and world
knowledge to work out what is being referred to and which way to understand ambiguous
expressions. Explicatures of utterances go beyond the literal meaning of the sentence. They are
interpretations based on the linguistic and the non-linguistic context. Background knowledge
comes in too. Since context has to be considered, this is pragmatics.
In working out an implicature, we go further and ask what is hinted at by an utterance in its
particular context. Inferences are derived by trying to understand the point of a sender
producing utterances that are likely to have particular explicatures. Literal meaning is the
foundation for explicature, on which implicatures are based. Each stage is built on the previous
one.
Types of meaning
Sender’s meaning (speaker meaning) is the meaning that the speaker or writer intends to
convey by means of an utterance.
Sentence meaning is the same as literal meaning.
Denotation, sense, reference and deixis
Expressions denote aspects of the world. Count nouns may be said to denote sets of things.
Sense: aspects of the meaning of an expression that gives it the denotation it has.
Differences in sense make for differences in denotation: with words interconnected by sense
relations, a person who knows the denotations of some words, can develop an understanding of
the meanings (senses) in the rest of the system.
Reference is what speakers or writers do when they use expressions. The relevant entities
outside language are called the referents of the referring expressions. Reference has to be
done and interpreted with regard to context.
Deictic expressions are words, phrases and features of grammar that have to be interpreted in
relation to the situation in which they are uttered. There are different kinds of deixis, relating to:
- Time: now, soon, recently, ago, tomorrow, next week.
- Place: here, there, two kilometres away, that side, this way, come, bring, upstairs.
- Participants and other entities: she, her, hers, he, him, his, they, it, this, that.
- Discourse itself: this sentence, the next paragraph.

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 EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT WAYS OF ENHANCING COMMON GROUND IN CONVERSATIONS -
JUCKER AND SMITH
Common ground: includes the assumptions which are considered by both partners in a
conversation and they assume to be shared. A speaker must make assumptions about the
linguistic contexts in which that information will be accessible to the partner. For interlocutors
who share a common culture, much common ground comes from culturally-shared activities,
or scripts: a pre-existing knowledge structure involving event sequences. A speaker works from
assumptions based on judgements about membership in socio-cultural categories. Even
strangers, if they realise each other to have a similar cultural background, can take a certain
amount of shared cultural knowledge for granted. A shared experience is itself no guarantee
that partners will be able to identify the relevant common ground, because the speakers may
remember different details or they may remember the same event in a different way.
Intimates, such as family members or close friends, share a lot of common ground while non-
intimates share less common ground and distants (typically strangers) share very little
common ground other than a fuzzy set of basic cultural knowledge.
Intimates are able to carry out much of their negotiation through implicit means, but even
intimates must often resort to explicit negotiation strategies when their assumptions do not
appear to be met, and for these negotiations to be successful, partners must build on their
acknowledged common ground. The term "negotiating common ground" refers to the means
by which partners signal their assumptions about each other's knowledge.
1-Personal pronouns: are used to exploit assumptions about interlocutors' knowledge.
2-Definite noun phrases: are used for referents that can be inferred.
3-Tag questions: tag questions are necessary to make information salient so the others can
interpret an utterance. Other tag questions request confirmation of the speaker's beliefs in the
face of some apparent differences of opinion.
Explicit negotiations of common ground:
1) Negotiating intended referents: when there is a misunderstanding as regards
referents, the subsequent repair results from the common ground of the speakers
involved.
2) Negotiating key-lexical items: Establishing context-specific interpretations of key-
lexical items. The intended interpretation of a lexical item can only be established in a
particular context.
3) Negotiating story details: The speakers mutually establish a detail of their story.
4) Assessing assumptions: When speakers do not exchange any information that is new
to either of them, they assess their assumptions. They strengthen the certainty of
existing assumptions and they establish their common ground. This kind is phatic
because their function seems to be to keep the communication channel open.
Intimates typically share a lot of common ground. There are a lot of assumptions they know
they share because of their common cultural context and because of many shared personal
experiences. Even when referring to shared experiences, they may need to determine whether
they have the same representation of them, and they may need to make different aspects of
them accessible and relevant for the partner. Intimates use a number of implicit means to signal
and confirm their assumptions. Referring expressions are an implicit means of negotiating
common ground. The decision to use forms such as first names, personal pronouns, or definite
noun phrases is based on the speaker's belief that the addressee will be able to identify the
intended referent, and it both exploits and enhances the assumed common ground.

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 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS - CAMERON
The organization of turn-taking: conversation requires speakers to take turns. Participants
will not usually all talk at once, and conversely there will not usually be stretches of time in
which no one talks at all. When simultaneous speech and silence occur, they are often
treated as problems which need to be repaired. In simultaneous speech, what typically
happens is that one speaker wins the floor while the other(s) fall silent. If silence becomes
long enough to feel awkward, someone will claim the floor. The floor is constantly negotiated
and renegotiated as a conversation goes along.

System for the organization of turn-taking for conversation

A turn consists of one or more “turn constructional units''. People who are listening to
someone else’s speech can use their knowledge of the possible unit types to project the end-
point of the turn currently in progress. The end of a turn constructional unit is potentially a
“turn transition relevant place” (TTRP), a point at which a speaker change may occur.
Projecting the end of a turn involves attending to a combination of things, including the content
of what is said, the prosodic and grammatical structure of the speech, and aspects of nonverbal
interaction (the speaker’s gaze, movement of the hands, body, etc.) When a turn transition is
reached, there is an ordered set of rules for the allocation of the next turn:
1) The current speaker selects/addresses the next speaker or if this mechanism does not
operate;
2) The next speaker self-selects or if this mechanism does not operate;
3) The current speaker may (but does not have to) continue.
There are many ways for a current speaker to select a next speaker: asking them a
question, naming them or aligning your body or gaze towards a specific addressee.
Simultaneous speech: stretches of talk in which two or more people speak at the same time.
Simultaneous speech is classed as:
-Overlaps: they result from the new speaker’s failure to project the end of the last speaker’s
turn with complete accuracy. The new speaker comes in when the other one hasn’t finished yet.
Overlaps are typically short and start close to a potential turn transition relevance place. They
are unintended errors. The interrupted party keeps on talking. The function of overlapping is to
support the speaker in holding the floor. Both speakers intervene simultaneously. The
interruption doesn’t signal disagreement with what it is said, nor lack of interest, nor desire to
change the topic/direction of the conversation.
-Interruptions: a new speaker may start to speak at a point in the last speaker’s utterance that
cannot possibly be a turn transition relevant place. It is a violation of the turn-taking system and
a hostile act which denies the current speaker his right to the floor. Interruptions often had the
effect of making the interrupted party stop speaking.

Adjacency pairs: /ədʒeɪsənsi/ spoken interaction is often structured around pairs of

utterances which occur one after the other in which the second utterance is functionally
dependent on the first. Sometimes the first turn presents the producer of the second turn with a
choice. E.g. invitations, offers, suggestions, proposals may be either accepted or declined.

Preference system: each first part creates an expectation of a particular second part: each first
part has a preferred and a dispreferred response. A question has as the preferred response an
answer, an offer or an invitation an acceptance, an assessment or a proposal an agreement, a
greeting a greeting, a complaint an apology and a blame a denial.
Preferred responses (acceptances) are prompt and short.

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Dispreferred responses (refusals) are hesitant and elaborate.

Pre-sequences prepare the ground for a further sequence and signal the type of utterance to
follow. Here we find:
Pre-invitations: I’ve got two tickets for the rugby match…
Pre-requests: are you busy right now?
Pre-announcements: you’ll never guess!

Insertion sequence: a pair that occur embedded within other adjacency pairs which act as
micro-sequences:
Conventional opening and closing structures: Openings tend to contain a greeting, an enquiry
after health and a past reference
Pre-closing sequence + farewell: A: Anyway, I’m gonna have to go. B: yeah. See you

THE NATURE OF PRONUNCIATION

Pronunciation is a major aspect of understanding and interpreting spoken language and

speakers’ intentions: is important for the clarity of messages and their denotative (meaning
conveyed in dictionary definitions), and connotative meaning (meaning conveyed in their
contexts of use). Pronunciation incorporates being understood in such a way that the audience
is able to interpret many things about the speaker’s nature and orientation. Pronunciation is a
cue to the speaker’s origin, social background, personal and communal identity, attitudes, and
motivations in speaking, as well as the role and position which the speaker is enacting in a
specific communicative context. Pronunciation is a social and expressive resource that can be
used to convey many different kinds of meaning. People interpret speech within the whole
context of utterance, which includes not only the physical and situational features of the setting
in which an utterance occurs, but also the background knowledge and assumptions people bring
to the setting of communication. People process speech by first attending to global features that
allow them to form initial impressions. These first impressions help to guide the process of
interpretation by cueing the speaker’s:
• Affective state and attitude • Background knowledge and assumptions
Pronunciation involves learning to articulate and discriminate the phonemes making up the
system of consonants and vowels of a language (segmental phonology) and the features of
connected speech making up its prosody (suprasegmental phonology).
Inaccurate pronunciation can cause real problems in communication in some situations.
Although not all miscommunication is serious, a lack of differentiation between one phoneme
and another can interfere with understanding. Segmental errors, substitutions, and
nonstandard pronunciation can cause listeners to become distracted from the content of speech
and focused on its form, in some cases, resulting in annoyance and/or “switching off” and
avoiding further contact with a speaker.
The prosodic system or suprasegmental level includes tone and intonation (defined by pitch),
rhythm (defined by duration), and stress (defined by perceptual prominence). Prosody
contributes to a speaker’s ability to convey and a listener’s ability to comprehend meaning and
intention. If the prosodic features of speech diverge from what a listener expects in a particular
context, there can be misunderstanding.

Pronunciation is a major ingredient in first impressions and in the interpretation of people’s

meaning and intentions, as an indicator of:
- Nature: inherent characteristics (Sex and age)
- Nurture: place of origin, education level, social or communal identity (ethnicity, social class)
- Situational positioning: communicative role and position, attitude towards the audience and
towards the topic.

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Varieties and stereotyping: The features of speech give a certain impression of speakers and
their status. Linguistic stereotyping based on accent is a quick way to classify people.
Stereotypes that a person connects to a person’s way of speaking can have significant and wide-
ranging effects.

Pronunciation and Identity: A person’s pronunciation is an indicator of the identity and

community membership which that person claims and projects to others. It reveals the country
and region of origin, ethnicity, culture, education, and profession of the speaker.
INTELLIGIBLE, COMPREHENSIBLE, NON-NATIVE MODELS IN ESL/EFL PRONUNCIATION
TEACHING - JOHN MURPHY
A pronunciation model serves as “a standard pronunciation form for a particular accent” that
can be used as “a point of reference” for instructional purposes.
A large percentage /pəsentɪdʒ/ of ESL/EFL learners have the goal of being able to acquire a
native-like English accent, although few L2 learners ever accomplish this. Native-like
phonological control is an unnecessary goal as long as learners continue to progress toward
relevant levels of intelligibility/comprehensibility.
Accent: “difference” in quality of pronunciation.
Intelligibility: products of “actual understanding”
Comprehensibility: the degree of effort you need to expend to understand a speaker.
Models need to be credible as ones to which learners may aspire. Non-native speech samples
are rich in potential for illustrating to learners that the pronunciation models and goals being
presented are feasible within their reach.
NNES problems with prominence and with word stress interfere with intelligibility. NNESs
who accurately produce sound segments within stressed syllables are more intelligible by NES
listeners. The tone choices L2 speakers make, impacts comprehensibility. Proficient English
listeners tend to perceive NNESs as more fluent when they make effective use of prosodic
features, appropriate rate of speech (neither too fast nor too slow), utterance length and length
and placement of pauses.

LINGUISTIC FORMS AND FUNCTIONS - BROWN AND YULE

The function of language:
The function which language serves in the expression of ‘content’ is transactional.
The function involved in expressing social relations and personal attitudes is interactional.
The most important function of language, however, is the communication of information: the
transmission of propositional information. The language which is used to convey factual or
propositional information is called primarily transaction language. What the speaker has
primarily in mind is the efficient transference of information. Language used in such situations
is primarily ‘message oriented’. It is important that the recipient gets the informative detail
correct.

The interactional view: interactional language

This is the phatic use of language. Phrases and echoes of phrases which are intended as
contributions rather than as instances of information-giving. It is the sharing of a common point
of view and the establishment of common ground.

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