The Prosody of a Popular Science Text (based on BBC movies)

Работа выполнена на английском языке, защищена 01.06.2013 в МГЛУ, оценка Отлично. Исследовались фонетические особенности научно-популярного текста на примере фильмов Би-би-си. ...

INTRODUCTION 2
CHAPTER 1. TAXONOMY OF TEXTS 5
1.1. Approaches to text classification 5
1.2. Phonostylistics. Phonetic styles and pragmatic aims of the speaker 8
1.3 The Variations of Phonetic Styles 9
CHAPTER 2. POPULAR SCIENCE TEXT 11
2.1. Characteristic features of the popular science text 11
2.1.1. Temporal characteristics 15
2.2. BBC films as a unique instance of popular science discourse 16
CHAPTER 3. PRACTICAL PART 21
3.1. The description of the procedure 21
3.1.1. The material for the analysis 21
3.1.2. Methods of the analysis 21
3.1.3. Text properties 22
3.2. The analysis of the temporal component 24
3.2.1 Pausation 24
3.2.2. Rhythmical structure 27
3.3. The analysis of the melody 28
3.4. Non-verbal component and its interaction with prosody 31
CONCLUSION 34
APPENDIX 1. SENSE-GROUPS AND PAUSATION 35
1.1. Age of Conquest 35
1.2. Allergy Planet 38
APPENDIX 2. NON-VERBAL COMPONENT AND PROSODY 41
1.1. Age of Conquest 41
1.2. Allergy Planet 43
BIBLIOGRAPHY 46

The object of the research is popular scientific text.
The subject of the research is phonetic peculiarities of popular science TV films, especially the temporal component and the interaction of nonverbal component and prosody in them.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the basic features of the temporal component and melody in the popular science TV films and characterize their interaction with various non-verbal means.

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Chapter 1 “Taxonomy of texts” consists of three paragraphs and examines the existing approaches to classification of texts, the notion of phonetic styles and their variations. The works of famous linguists are analyzed.
Chapter 2 “Popular science text” consists of two paragraphs. In the first one we focus on this particular variation of prepared speech and examin e its characteristic features, and in the second one we discuss the peculiarities of the BBC films as a unique form of popular science discourse.

The experimental data proves that a long, loud sounds and following a pause can draw the listeners’ attention. The low pitch of the voice makes the perception of information easier (and that is why in the majority of cases the text is read by male speakers). The raised pitch helps to draw the listener’s attention. Background noises are also important. E.S. Kudinova in her article "Verbal and nonverbal interaction in communication" remarks that "Sounds and their intensity also have significant effect upon the process of communication… Music can calm down or excite". A remarkable thing is that the quality of aural recognition of different types of linguistic manipulation (order, request, begging, threat etc.) is better in the situation when video complements audio track. The next task is tomake information easily understandable. It is realised mostly through lexical and grammatical means. Yet intonation has specific functions that make the text easy to be perceived by the non-professional audience. O.F. Kryvnova says that ‘Under the terms of semantic and syntactic complexity, diversity and linearity of the scientific text, syntactic and organizing functions of intonation obtain a particular functional importance for the perception and understanding of the text. T.M. Nikolaeva has noted an increasing amount of the instances of accentual highlighting in the reproduced scientific discourse and points out the fact that general system of accentual highlighting in oral scientific discourse is a coherent system where the limits are drawn the highlighting of the initial syntactic words and establishing the informational reference points and giving qualification statements.One of the most important problems is division into paragraphs. Professor T.I. Shevchenko writes: ‘The leading role in the division into paragraphs is played by the contrastive pitch alteration and the long pause’. According to her point of view, the paragraphs’ boundaries are explicitly marked by prosodic means, those primarily which attract the listener’s attention more effectively.Among all variations of the prepared speech popular science text is most similar to lecture. On one hand, the pragmatic aims of the both variations coincide (to educate, to entertain, to impart information), but on the other, the priority of these aims is absolutely different. For the lecture the main pragmatic aims are to educate and to impart information (usually academic or technical) while entertaining is auxiliary and serves for keeping the audience involved and absorbed by the subject. For the popular science text, especially in the case of TV programme, the main aim is indeed to entertain. It is supposed that one could evoke the viewers’ interest to the informational-didactic content of the text and motivate them to the further studies of the subject. Hence popular science texts, as opposed to lectures, may fail to contain serious data, but focus our attention on the most vivid and fascinating aspects of the subject. A popular science style text should have an easily-read structure. It brings about the simplification of the utterance at all linguistic levels. If we compare academic text presented to the professional audience, and popular science text, we will find the following differences: Tab. 1Academic stylePopular science styleComplex sentences with branched syntactic linking prevail Rather formal registerIs full of abstract notionsExtensive use of terms Is arranged in a logical patternEvery claim must be supported with a piece of evidenceA more simple syntaxAll terms are definedAbundant text linksInterjections and rather informal expressions are usedUse of personal pronouns to establish a dialogue with the reader/audienceTypical prosodic features of academic and popular science texts are:Tab. 2Academic textPopular science text4 typical tones: Low Rise, Low Fall, High Fall, Fall-Rise. High Fall and Fall-Rise are mainly used for establishing contrast. Falling and rising tones can be rotated to make the text more expressive. Fall-Rise is often used to create prosodic diversity.The tempo increases when the speaker tells extra information, which supplements or illustrates the main idea. It also increases when the speaker uses parenthesis, detached constructions or clichéd linking expressions.Wide pitch range is used in the beginning of super-phrasal entities for arranging quotations, examples and titles. Narrow pitch range is used for arranging parenthetic clauses, explanations. Generally, pitch range alterations are used to separate most important information bits from the minor ones, used for illustration purposes.Shorter sense-groups Longer pausesPhrasal emphasis falls at the terminology unitsOccasional use of emphatic scales (Sliding, Scandent)High pre-head is widely usedFor the purpose of highlighting High Fall, Fall-Rise or Fall+Rise patterns are often usedHesitation and suspense pauses can be used2.1.1. Temporal characteristicsScientists believe that pausation depends not on the individual psycho- or physiological abilities of the speaker, but on the basic laws of mental process. M.G. Mirianashvili distinguishes:physiological pauses (heterogeneous in length, might be caused by stuttering, breathing problems, groping for the right word expression etc)speech pauses (framed by breathing cycle, usually are not noticed by common human being, serves to separate into segments and unite it)technical (depend on the rhythm)semantic (caused by intonation shift)O.F. Krivnova thinks that breathing cycle is synchronized with the process of speech production and speaks about thinking-breathing complex. To be energetically efficient, the strategy of text production must be formed on the basis of breathing needs. The fact that there are texts which are easy to read aloud and texts, which seem to be created only for visual reading, is a bright example for this theory.2.2. BBC films as a unique instance of popular science discourseReferring to the examples of popular science discourse we could recollect the films produced by BBC or the Discovery channel and other companies which are known for their everlasting popularity among the viewers of all ages. The TV format allows to use audio and graphics simultaneously and that results in a radically new quality of data presentation. The details of it would be further investigated in the practical part of this work, while generally we could only say that this new level provides a deeper interaction between the viewers and the subject in the emotional sphere. Here we could recollect the words of N.I. Mironova who says that ‘A man’s emotional state strongly determines his perception, attention and ideation. It is proved that the people pay attention first to the information which emotional coloring corresponds to their own emotional state’. And to influence the emotional state of a person there is nothing better than proper music background. Indeed, the popular science broadcasts always have a beautiful soundtrack which is carefully fitted to the sequence of key frames and evokes the needed feelings in the viewers. It would not be a hyperbole to say that none other variation – whether it be lecture or news – requires so extensive, almost obligatory use of soundtrack.As live performances are concerned, when the lecturer is speaking directly facing the audience (and speaking of popular science films, when the anchorperson or the interviewed person appears in the frame), there appears another factor affecting the perception of the information – facial expressions and gestures of the speaker. Non-verbal actions convey a significant amount of information; meanwhile, non-verbal and prosodic features of the speech are mutually determined. E.S. Kudinova writes, that in the communication process the kinetic means perform specific informational function. The following functions of gestures have pragmatic meaning: establishing a contact (look eye to eye, hand/palm gesture towards a person), establishing the feedback (a look, a nod), self-presentation (hands crossed at the chest), social orientation (a bow of a certain depth, type of a handshake), motivating function (clapping hands, dominating look), regulating function (waving hands to conduct the crowd’s behaviour). Expressive functions are: emphatic (erect index finger to highlight the importance of the information; waving index finger means categorical denial), emotive (facial expressions, looks, posture) and adaptive (usually unconscious gestures and facial expressions that reflects embarrassment, hesitation, nervousness). All these functions can be performed by a limited set of gestures, because each one may express multiple meanings. Of course, gestures and facial expressions are not the only means of non-verbal communication. It is a complicated system, which includes such phenomena as proxemics (the use of space to define the level of privacy or attraction), chronemics (the use of time, pausing, waiting), oculesics (use of eye contact), haptics (tactile contact), olfactics (smell and taste), kinesics (body motions) and posture (stance), and even adornment (the meaningful use of clothing, jewellery and hairstyle). Of this list, not all items are equally significant. The ones we would like to discuss in this paper are kinesics, oculesics and chronemics, which are probably the main non-verbal means the learners should be aware of to successfully interpret the message given by the speaker and avoid any misunderstanding.It was not long ago that modern linguistics began to acknowledge the importance of interaction of verbal and non-verbal means of communication. A few works that investigate this topic mention the notion of kinesic-prosodic complex (a chain of gestures and a prosodic core working together within a sence-group). The nature of interaction of kinetic and prosodic means is determined by the aim of the utterance. There were experiments in which researchers compared the impression made by voice and the impression made by facial expressions and postures. They have demonstrated that dominance and power are better conveyed by the voice while sympathy and positive feelings are better conveyed by facial expressions. It would not be a mistake to day that non-verbal components exert serious influence not only on the meaning of the utterance, but on the very essence of communication itself. (In)convincingness, (in)effectiveness (in)sincerity of the utterance are strongly dependent on the character of non-verbal component. One of the interesting points of this interaction is the opportunity to discern lies if prosodic and kinetic signs do not match: even a trained person is unable to control micromotion of facial muscles and some minor gestures, what is immediately noticed by our subconcious. Summing up what we know about gestures, we can distinguish conscious (signs made intentionally, usually with hands, may substitute words/expressions) and unconscious (instinctive, often originate from atavistic reactions of physiological nature). By the form we divide them into beating gestures (rhythmical shaking hand/arm/palm/finger in a vertical plane), iconic gestures (pantomimic in nature, imitate certain action or image, like computer icons), pointers (pointing something with a hand/finger, sometimes simultaneously tracking the shape of an object) and the last group, very heterogeneous in form, we call emotional.Fig. 1In the table 3 there are some examples of different types of gestures taken from the BBC film ‘Age of Conquest’ which is analyzed in the practical part of this paper.Tab. 3Types of gesturesFunctionExamplesPointersRegulatingMaintaining the contactIconic gesturesEmphaticMaintaining the contactEmblemsSubstitute for words.Emotional gesturesEmotiveMaintaining the contactBeating gesturesEmphaticEstablishing a contactCHAPTER 3. PRACTICAL PART3.1. The description of the procedure3.1.1. The material for the analysisFor the purpose of the analysis we have chosen two BBC popular science films, ‘Age of Conquest’ from the series ‘Seven Ages of Britain’, and ‘Allergy Planet’. For our study we would use short extracts from the films, namely [49:08-51:14] from AoC and [05:32-07:12] from AP, because they allow us to observe all the peculiarities of the material.In both texts the presenters are middle-aged male native speakers with standard British accent (RP).In the ‘Age of Conquest’ (AoC) the author of the text and the presenter is the same person – Mr. David Dimbley. 3.1.2. Methods of the analysisMethods used for research are auditory analysis (n=3) and instrumental analysis (with the Praat computer program). Our tasks for the auditory analysis were: to analyze the syntactic structure of the text: to divide the text into phrases, to divide the text into sense groups; to find the highlighted words; to determine functions of the pauses, their role in synchronization of video and audio channels of communication; to define rhythmic patterns and syntactic structure of the texts;to study the non-verbal component of communication (gestures, eye contacts, facial expressions, music) and its interaction with the other ones. The task for the instrumental analysis was to measure the pause length.3.1.3. Text propertiesThe main characteristics of the chosen texts are outlined in the following table. Tab. 4Age of ConquestAllergy PlanetAim of communicationto entertain, to informto inspire further studies to rise a problemFormalityless formalmore formalDegree of spontaneityprepared speechType of script presentationacting outreadingType of interaction with the audiencedirectindirectAnchorperson in the screenpresentabsentMusic usedas an expressive meansas a backgroundIt is obvious that both texts can be classified as belonging to the popular science style. The basic characteristics of the style (and common features of both films) are:the subject of the text has scientific nature (medicine for AP & history of art for AoC);the aim of communication is to inform the audience;additional aim of communication is to entertain the audiencestraightforward way of addressing the audience, readiness to share information, appealing to simple feelings;clear way of expressing ideas, absence of sophisticated syntactic and grammar structuresThe comparison of these texts shows that although they belong to the same functional style, the form of presentation is different: the first one is an oral presentation and the second one is reading aloud. Due to this fact, the prosody of these texts must be different. So, our next task is to analyze the prosodic component to find these diversities. 3.2. The analysis of the temporal component3.2.1 PausationThe classification we adopt in this paper divides pauses into several groups according to their length.The first group consists of pauses with the length of 100-350ms. They are super-short and perceived within the sense-groups. We call them situational because their function varies depending on the situation. The second group with the length of 400-1900ms is short pauses that usually appear between sense-groups and between phrases. We call them logical.The third group of pauses are long (2000ms and more) and we call them rhetorical. In some cases they can be super-long, up to ten seconds, and often filled with music.In the ‘Age of Conquest’ (AoC) the first group prevails while in the ‘Allergy Planet’ it is the second group:Fig. 2In the following table there are some examples the pauses of each group:Tab. 5Age of ConquestAllergy Planet Situational pauses to see | historyit’s| actuallybut first |the army has to be fedAsthma and hay fever rates | soaredthe list | goes onmost remote inhabited island | on Earth Logical pausesWestminster Abbey here with the hand of God, || blessing it, || and here Harold | receiving the crown, || with his orb and his scepter, || people looking on ||It laid fifteen hundred miles off the coast of Africa, || on the most remote inhabited islandIsolated from the outside world for much of its history, || bit’s still only reached by seven day boat journey. || Rhetorical pauses…little details of || farming life here: || ploughing, |sowing, ||and the man killing birds with the sling. |||Heads chopped off, | hands chopped off; | and the battle | rages all day long.|||But how did allergies become such an important part of our everyday lives? |||Forty years ago || scientists thought they may have stumbled on the answer. ||| Hesitation pausesBut | at the same time some of them of | Aesop fablesIt’s not strictly speaking | a tapestryabsentThere are no hesitational pauses in ‘Allergy Planet’ because the script is read rather than acted out, as in ‘Age of Conquest’. The latter has a number of traits typical for spontaneous speech which will be mentioned later in this chapter. Fig. 3As the pie chart above demonstrates, the majority of the pauses are logical, they perform a delimitative function. Situational pauses are not so numerous, they also perform a delimitative function, dividing sense-groups, however, when they are located at the end of a sense-group, they serve to give the additional prominence to the following word (q.v. table 5). Long pauses are used to demarkate larger text units – in the AoC it is phrases and in the AP it is sentences.The Appendix 1 shows that in the AP pausation depends on the punctuation, exactly as it should be in the case of prepared reading. All the pauses are planned; average sense-group length is 2.1 seconds. On the contrary, due to the element of spontaneity involved, in AoC the fractional division into sense group regularly appears. Average length of sense groups in this text is 1.2 seconds. 3.2.2. Rhythmical structureIn the AoC the presenter appears in the screen for several minutes in the beginning of the each episode to establish direct contact with the audience and to introduce a new topic. Then he disappears to let the camera show the discussed object, and to maintain the contact prosody is used, primarily – rhythm. The rhythmical structure of the text is arranged as a succession of sense groups that are more or less equal in length (q.v. Appendix 1) and are separated by the pauses of approximately equal length, too. It is also supported by syntactical repetitions (right down to the end, right round at the back; some of them of Aesop fables, some of them of little stories, some nobody knows what they are) and the prosodically marked words (there are approximately 2 marked words per sense-group). In AP the number of prosodically marked words increases in the sense-groups which are too syntactically complicated to read aloud smoothly for some reasons:But how did allergies become such an important part of our everyday lives?It laid fifteen hundred miles off the coast of Africa, || on the most remote inhabited island | on Earth.|||They break the monotony of the utterance and make it easier to capture the information. The use of rhythm keeps the audience’s attention, lessens the monotony of the speech, easies the perception of the information. We can call it as a universal means of manipulating audience.3.3. The analysis of the melodyAs it has been already said, the main cause of the difference between samples lies in the way the texts are presented. In the ‘Allergy Planet’ the script is read, while in ‘Age of Conquest’ the script is acted out by the anchorman and there are elements of spontaneous monologue. The main markers of spontaneous speech are: hesitation pauses and pauses that disrupt the syntactic division of the utterance, fast tempo, emotional coloring of the voice, lax articulation.