Speaking dramatically
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Friederike Kern
Abstract
Live commentaries of football matches provide a rich source for the analysis of verbal constructions of drama and suspense. In this paper, I will show how radio reporters construct and employ the different speech styles “building up suspense” and “presenting a climax” for the contextualization of specific verbal actions. Both speech styles are used for dramatic descriptions of events on the soccer field but they feature different sets of prosodic characteristics. Whereas “building up suspense” displays a continuous rise of fundamental frequency across units, relatively narrow pitch range within units, and an absence of pauses within and between units as the most relevant features, “presenting a climax” exhibits a considerable deceleration of articulation rate, with extremely lengthened nuclear syllables. Furthermore, it will be argued that both types of dramatic speech style differ significantly from speech styles used for the presentation of background information on the match.
Abstract
Live commentaries of football matches provide a rich source for the analysis of verbal constructions of drama and suspense. In this paper, I will show how radio reporters construct and employ the different speech styles “building up suspense” and “presenting a climax” for the contextualization of specific verbal actions. Both speech styles are used for dramatic descriptions of events on the soccer field but they feature different sets of prosodic characteristics. Whereas “building up suspense” displays a continuous rise of fundamental frequency across units, relatively narrow pitch range within units, and an absence of pauses within and between units as the most relevant features, “presenting a climax” exhibits a considerable deceleration of articulation rate, with extremely lengthened nuclear syllables. Furthermore, it will be argued that both types of dramatic speech style differ significantly from speech styles used for the presentation of background information on the match.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword ix
- Preface xi
- List of contributors xix
-
Introduction
- Prosody in interaction 3
- Future prospects of research on prosody: The need for publicly available corpora 41
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Part I. Prosody and other levels of linguistic organization in interaction
- The phonetic constitution of a turn-holding practice 51
- Rush-throughs as social action 73
- Prosodic constructions in making complaints 81
- The relevance of context to the performing of a complaint 105
- Prosodic variation in responses 109
- Retrieving, redoing and resuscitating turns in conversation 131
- Doing confirmation with ja/nee hoor 161
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Part II. Prosodic units as a structuring device in interaction
- Intonation phrases in natural conversation 191
- Making units 213
- Speaking dramatically 217
- Commentating fictive and real sports 239
- Tonal repetition and tonal contrast in English carer-child interaction 243
- Repetition and contrast across action sequences 263
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Part III. Prosody and other semiotic resources in interaction
- Communicating emotion in doctor-patient interaction 269
- Double function of prosody: Processes of meaning-making in narrative reconstructions of epileptic seizures 295
- Multimodal expressivity of the Japanese response particle Huun 303
- Response tokens – A multimodal approach 333
- Multiple practices for constructing laughables 339
- Multimodal laughing 369
- Constructing meaning through prosody in aphasia 373
- Further perspectives on cooperative semiosis 395
- Author index 401
- Subject index 403
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword ix
- Preface xi
- List of contributors xix
-
Introduction
- Prosody in interaction 3
- Future prospects of research on prosody: The need for publicly available corpora 41
-
Part I. Prosody and other levels of linguistic organization in interaction
- The phonetic constitution of a turn-holding practice 51
- Rush-throughs as social action 73
- Prosodic constructions in making complaints 81
- The relevance of context to the performing of a complaint 105
- Prosodic variation in responses 109
- Retrieving, redoing and resuscitating turns in conversation 131
- Doing confirmation with ja/nee hoor 161
-
Part II. Prosodic units as a structuring device in interaction
- Intonation phrases in natural conversation 191
- Making units 213
- Speaking dramatically 217
- Commentating fictive and real sports 239
- Tonal repetition and tonal contrast in English carer-child interaction 243
- Repetition and contrast across action sequences 263
-
Part III. Prosody and other semiotic resources in interaction
- Communicating emotion in doctor-patient interaction 269
- Double function of prosody: Processes of meaning-making in narrative reconstructions of epileptic seizures 295
- Multimodal expressivity of the Japanese response particle Huun 303
- Response tokens – A multimodal approach 333
- Multiple practices for constructing laughables 339
- Multimodal laughing 369
- Constructing meaning through prosody in aphasia 373
- Further perspectives on cooperative semiosis 395
- Author index 401
- Subject index 403
