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Exploring the prosody of stance

Variation in the realization of stance adverbials
  • Douglas Biber and Shelley Staples
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Spoken Corpora and Linguistic Studies
This chapter is in the book Spoken Corpora and Linguistic Studies

Abstract

Over the last three decades, several studies have applied corpus-analytical techniques to investigate the ways in which ‘stance’ is expressed in spoken and written discourse. Corpus research has shown that there are strong differences among registers in their reliance on the different types of stance expressions. In general, spoken registers express stance to a much greater extent than written registers. Based on analysis of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English, the present paper explores some of the ways in which prosody interacts with lexico-grammatical structure in the expression of stance. Two major types of stance devices are explored: stance adverbials and stance verb+complement clause constructions. The analysis will focus on the extent to which these stance devices are marked with prosodic prominence (shown by pitch, length, and amplitude) in comparison to other propositional information in the same utterance. These findings will be interpreted relative to two overall goals: 1. to investigate the ways in which prosodic patterns vary across the different types and functions of stance expressions, and 2. to explore the possibility of a general ‘prosody of stance’ in English.

Abstract

Over the last three decades, several studies have applied corpus-analytical techniques to investigate the ways in which ‘stance’ is expressed in spoken and written discourse. Corpus research has shown that there are strong differences among registers in their reliance on the different types of stance expressions. In general, spoken registers express stance to a much greater extent than written registers. Based on analysis of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English, the present paper explores some of the ways in which prosody interacts with lexico-grammatical structure in the expression of stance. Two major types of stance devices are explored: stance adverbials and stance verb+complement clause constructions. The analysis will focus on the extent to which these stance devices are marked with prosodic prominence (shown by pitch, length, and amplitude) in comparison to other propositional information in the same utterance. These findings will be interpreted relative to two overall goals: 1. to investigate the ways in which prosodic patterns vary across the different types and functions of stance expressions, and 2. to explore the possibility of a general ‘prosody of stance’ in English.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction: Spoken corpora and linguistic studies 1
  5. Section I: Experiences and requirements of spoken corpora compilation
  6. Methodological issues for spontaneous speech corpora compilation 27
  7. A multilingual speech corpus of North-Germanic languages 69
  8. Methodological considerations for the development and use of sign language acquisition corpora 84
  9. Section II: Multilevel corpus annotation
  10. The grammatical annotation of speech corpora 105
  11. The IPIC resource and a cross-linguistic analysis of information structure in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese 129
  12. The variation of action verbs in multilingual spontaneous speech corpora 152
  13. Section III: Prosody and its functional levels
  14. Speech and corpora 191
  15. Corpus design for studying the expression of emotion in speech 210
  16. Illocution, attitudes and prosody 233
  17. Exploring the prosody of stance 271
  18. Section IV: Syntax and Information Structure
  19. Prosody and information structure 297
  20. The notion of sentence and other discourse units in corpus annotation 331
  21. Syntactic properties of spontaneous speech in the Language into Act Theory 365
  22. Prosodic constraints for discourse markers 411
  23. Appendix 468
  24. Index 496
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.61.10bib

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction: Spoken corpora and linguistic studies 1
  5. Section I: Experiences and requirements of spoken corpora compilation
  6. Methodological issues for spontaneous speech corpora compilation 27
  7. A multilingual speech corpus of North-Germanic languages 69
  8. Methodological considerations for the development and use of sign language acquisition corpora 84
  9. Section II: Multilevel corpus annotation
  10. The grammatical annotation of speech corpora 105
  11. The IPIC resource and a cross-linguistic analysis of information structure in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese 129
  12. The variation of action verbs in multilingual spontaneous speech corpora 152
  13. Section III: Prosody and its functional levels
  14. Speech and corpora 191
  15. Corpus design for studying the expression of emotion in speech 210
  16. Illocution, attitudes and prosody 233
  17. Exploring the prosody of stance 271
  18. Section IV: Syntax and Information Structure
  19. Prosody and information structure 297
  20. The notion of sentence and other discourse units in corpus annotation 331
  21. Syntactic properties of spontaneous speech in the Language into Act Theory 365
  22. Prosodic constraints for discourse markers 411
  23. Appendix 468
  24. Index 496
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