30. What extralinguistic factors play the leading role in phonetic styles formation?

The aim of communication is the general strategy of the speaker. When we speak we may have a variety of aims: to inform, to instruct, to convince, to amuse, to suggest, to advertise and so on. In each particular case we select intonation that will serve our purpose and make our speech effective. So it is the aim that basically determines the choice of intonation means and that is why it is the most important factor and it is sometimes called style-forming.

The degree of formality of discourse reflects social roles and relationships of the participants. According to the degree of formality speech situations are generally described in terms of formal-informal, official-unofficial. In formal situations the speaker tends to make his speech more distinct and precise, while informal situations are characterised by more rapid and careless speech.

According to the degree of spontaneity we distinguish spontaneous speech (verbal realization of speech is simultaneous to the formation of the idea in the mind of the speaker) and fully prepared speech (written and rehearsed in advance).

A spontaneous text is characterized by a number of relevant features both on segmental and suprasegmental levels: simplification of sound sequences, non-systematic rhythm; incomplete melody contours; abundance of pauses, hesitation pauses in particular, varying loudness, narrow pitch range, varying tempo (from very fast to very slow).

As regards the speaker’s attitude, I must say that oral discourse reflects a variety of attitudes and emotions of the speaker to his listeners, the subject matter, the situation. Intonation varieties are as numerous as varieties of attitudes or emotions. For example, the speaker can be involved or indifferent, friendly or unfriendly and so on.

All these extralinguistic factors in their combination determine the choice of phonetic means in different forms of communication. Generally two forms of communication are distinguished according to the number of participants involved in a speech activity: monologue and dialogue. A monologue is the participation of one individual in speech production. A dialogue involves the participation of others. An important feature to be considered here is that in monologuing the speaker does not expect an immediate response, while in a dialogue there is interaction: participants expect each other to respond.

All these factors determine the choice of particular intonation means which can be attributed to a particular phonetic (intonational) style. There exist different classifications of phonostyles, because in working out these classifications scholars choose different extralinguistic factors as the most important ones.

31. Stylistic modifications of speech sounds

Stylistic sound variations are brought about by the extralinguistic situation of the discourse. The first thing that counts in the stylistic modifications of sounds is the character of relationship between the participants of discourse, which is manifested in the degree of formality. It is assumed that in formal situations the participants tend to monitor their linguistic behaviour, their pronunciation lends to be careful and is characterized by articulatory precision. In informal situations where speakers are more relaxed speech is generally faster and less careful. In-formal speech used in everyday conversation is often referred to as fast (rapid) colloquial speech.

It is obvious that the extent to which coarticulation and simplification processes are displayed in connected speech depends on the style and tempo of speech. In formal speech the articulation is more careful and precise. In informal casual discourse (fast colloquial speech) these processes are more marked. In this section we shall give an overview of the modifications of speech sounds in the chain of speech which take place under the influence of the extralinguistic factors.

The most frequent modifications of consonants in rapid colloquial speech are: — alveolar stops [t], [d] and in some cases [n] are modified under the influence of the following velar or labial consonant, e. g.

that place hard problem

that book hard blow

good morning

[s], [z] assimilate more often than in formal speech, they are modified under the influence of the following palatal [j] and become palatoalveolar:

miss you as you this year as yet

[t], [d] are affected by the following [j] in a similar way: and turn into palato-alveolar affricates. In this case both the place and the manner of articulation are involved in assimilation:

would you can't you mind you about you

in informal casual speech complete assimilation of consonants often takes place:

let me ten minutes nice shoes

[t] tends to be reduced to a glottal stop before a plosive consonant:

didn't go Great Britain

In fast colloquial speech we can also observe elision of consonants. Elision can be defined as a complete loss or disappearance of a speech sound. usually due to the increased rate of speech. The most typical cases of con-sonant elision are:

elision of

[h] in personal and possessive pronouns he, his, her, him and the auxiliary verbs have, has, had

[l]tends to be elided when preceded by [ɔː] always, all right

[t] and [d] are often elided in consonant clusters when followed by another consonant: next day, mashed potatoes, next point

[ð] in the definite article the can be elided: and the reason for this

As regards stylistic modifications of vowels we should point out that the realization of reduction as well as assimilation and accommodation depends on the style of speech. In rapid colloquial speech reduction may result in vowel elision, the complete omission of the unstressed vowel. Elision may occur both within one word and at word boundaries: history, factory, phonetics, correct, perhaps, come along get another

In contrast to slow formal speech in which vowels have comparative quality stability in rapid informal speech we can observe frequent sound variability. Typical simplification processes in fast colloquial speech are:

• reduction of [i:] and [u:] both in quantity and quality

I don't believe it

a new aspect

• monophthongization of diphthongs

here and there

really strange

now they

South ofItaly

and now we come to

hope to settle it

• elision ofschwa in the preposition or particle to:

next to the door

to see them

back to London

• elision of [I] in initial position

extremely

it's necessary

it's paid well

Numerous simplification processes that were described are an attribute of informal casual speech, while prepared educated speech is characterized by articulatory precision. In terms of pronunciation teaching it is necessary to

familiarize the foreign learners of English with these segmental modifications, because they must be ready to recognize and decode them in the chain of speech. However, they should be aware of their stylistic colouring and avoid extreme forms of simplifications outside fast colloquial speech ..As regards the . modifications of speech sounds that are the result of coarticulation processes in connected speech they should definitely be practised and mastered.