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non-verbal components from other subsystems – interpersonal space, eye contact, mimicry, posture, etc.), which, if the elements of other non-verbal subsystems are also taken into account during the research procedures, is likely to confirm the conclusion about the extremely high frequency of non-verbal components in the analyzed variety of pedagogical discourse.

As for illustrative gestures, their usage and frequency depend on the nature of the educational material (on whether it permits and requires gestures of illustrative character) and the peculiarities of the linguistic personality (there are more illustrative gestures in the behaviour of some teachers – for example the teacher of feminine type in the above table 1 and the teacher of the masculine type in illustration 1 in table 2). It should also be specified that gender characteristics and their possible influence on the use of gestures on the whole or of certain types of gestures by certain types of speakers were not considered in this study.

That’s one person. (the index finger is raised up, the rest are clenched into a fist) [5*]

That’s two people. (the index and middle fingers are in form V, the rest are clenched into a fist) [5*].

Here are three final points… (thumb, index and middle finger directed at the audience) [5*].

As an example of a clearly illustrative gesture, we could cite the teacher’s chopping gesture when she was explaining the so-called cleft sentences, given at number 3 in Table 1.

The explanatory procedure may make the teacher use a series of illustrative gestures if he or she is switching from one concept (singular) to another (plural). A similar series of hand movements is shown below in Table 3. First of all, noun and verb concord is discussed if the noun is used in the singular (1). Then two hands touch, indicating the need for concord, with fingers emphasizing the idea of separate existence of the two grammatical sentence parts (subject and predicate) – Subjects and verbs, they have to agree. (2). A circular movement of the right hand around the left (3) in the place of their contact just a second before (2) — When two nouns are so commonly put together, that they are thought of as a single unit (repetition of gesture 1), then we use a singular verb. The index and the middle finger are raised upward with an energetic movement (4), since this is a different case of agreement, and instead of one person there are two in this utterance –The new CO and the majority shareholder are coming. That's two people (4) [5*].

Table 3 A series of illustrative gestures used while explaining the rules of concord in the English

sentence

When gaining the last objective of this research paper (considering the relationship between

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the gestures used and the speaker’s communicative intention), the conclusion is made that regular dependencies can be observed only in two cases:

1)In directive speech acts (stimulus to action) in the analyzed discourse numerous and various pointing gestures (about 50%) can be registered – for example, the index finger (straightened or half-bent) or the movement of the entire right hand with an open palm and fingers close together are used when the teacher is attracting the virtual audience's attention to some visual aids or pointing to himself or herself (in the latter case, sometimes touching the chest; or directing a pointing finger or fingers to the mouth during the articulation of a certain sound);

2)In an interrogative speech act (which can also be treated as a directive speech act, as it induces the listener to produce a speech act) open gestures of both hands are often used (at the same time expressing bewilderment or interest by means of mimic components). Phatic or regulating gestures of attracting attention the audience's attention were also registered, for example, a raised index finger or thumb.

For example, do you have a routine (hands with open palms are close together) in the mornings? [3*]

In most cases, however, the analysis does not reveal any regular correspondences between the communicative intention of the speaker (a particular speech act) and the gestures used. It may be connected with a limited variety of speech acts in this type of pedagogical discourse. In order to come to more reliable conclusions some additional research is needed, which would include fragments of non-virtual pedagogical discourse as well.

Conclusion

The results of the study indicate high frequency of various types of gestures in the virtual pedagogical discourse without any feedback from the audience. The exact degree of frequency depends on various factors: the type of the teacher's linguistic personality, the stage of the lesson, the complexity of the material explained. A very high degree of frequency of gestures and other non-verbal components is registered in certain parts of the analyzed discourse – several gestures can be used within the framework of one utterance. Such density of gesticulation is encountered, first of all, when gestures perform an informative or an emphatic function. The specific character of the virtual pedagogical discourse with a remote audience is manifested in the predominance of gestures performing phatic, emphatic and illustrative functions, which is connected with the necessity of constantly reinforcing contact with the audience to be. It was noted that most gestures perform several functions simultaneously, and certain patterns of combining different functions were registered, primarily a combination of a phatic and an illustrative functions, as well as of an emphatic and informative ones. The analysis described in the paper also indicates the desirability of further research concerning certain aspects of the problem discussed, including some comparative study of the gestures accompanying English and Russian teachers’ verbal behavior and the possibilities of native culture interference. It would be of use to study typical patterns of non-verbal components, gestures in particular, in virtual and non-virtual pedagogical context.

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References

[1]Kreydlin G.Ye. Neverbal'naya semiotika: YAzyk tela i yestestvennyy yazyk Tekst. / G.Ye. Kreydlin. – M.: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2002. – 592 s.

[2]Gorelov I.N. Neverbal'nyye komponenty kommunikatsii / I.N. Gorelov. – M.: Knizhnyy dom «Librokom», 2009. – 112 c.

[3]Leontovich O.A. Vvedeniye v mezhkul'turnuyu kommunikatsiyu / O.A. Leontovich. – Volgo-grad: Peremena, 2003. – 399 s.

[4]Dutova N.V. Gendernyye osobennosti funktsionirovaniya neverbal'nykh komponentov

vkommunikativnom povedenii yazykovoy lichnosti: mezhkul'turnyy aspekt: dis. … kand. filol. nauk : 10.02.19 / Dutova Natal'ya Valer'yevna. – Chita, 2014. – 335 s.

[5]Sternin I.A. Ocherk angliyskogo kommunikativnogo povedeniya / I.A. Sternin, T.V. Larina, M.A. Sternina. – Voronezh: Izd-vo «Istoki», 2003. – 185 s.

[6]Lutovinova O.V. YAzykovaya lichnost' v virtual'nom diskurse: avtoref. dis. … dok. filol. nauk: 10.02.19 / Lutovinova Ol'ga Vasil'yevna. – Volgograd, 2013. – 42 s.

[7]Karasik V.I. YAzykovoy krug: lichnost', kontsepty, diskurs / V.I. Karasik. - Volgograd: Peremena, 2002. – 477 s.

[8]Pichugina V.K. Obrazovatel'nyy, pedagogicheskiy i antropologicheskiy diskursy v sovremennoy pedagogike / V.K. Pichugina // Innovatsii v obrazovanii. – M.: Sovremennaya gumanitarnaya akademiya, 2010. – № 11. – S. 99–110.

[9]Tlenkopacheva M.N. Osnovnyye elementy pedagogicheskogo diskursa // Aktual'nyye vo-prosy filologicheskikh nauk: materialy III mezhdunar. nauch. konf. (g. Kazan', oktyabr' 2015 g.). – Kazan': Buk, 2015. – S. 57–60.

[10]Petrova Ye.A. Zhesty v pedagogicheskom protsesse: uchebnoye posobiye k kursu

«Osnovy pedagogicheskogo masterstva» / Ye.A. Petrova. – M.: Moskovskoye gorodskoye pedagogicheskoye obshchestvo, 1998. – 224 s.

Analysed sources

[1*] BBC English Masterclass: Giving emphasis using ‘what’, URL: http:// www .bbc. co. uk/ learningenglish /English /course /towards – advanced /unit-14/session-1 (vremya obrashcheniya - 16.09.18).

[2*] Unit 1: English In A Minute. Prevent vs Avoid, URL: http:// www .bbc. co .uk / learningenglish/english/course/eiam/unit-1/session-30

(vremya obrashcheniya - 16.09.18).

[3*] Tim's Pronunciation Workshop: linking /j/ URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningeng- lish/english/course/towards-advanced/unit-19/session-5 (vremya obrashcheniya - 17.09.18).

[4*] BBC Masterclass: Subject-Verb Agreement 1 URL: http:// www .bbc. co. uk / learningenglish/english/course/towards-advanced/unit-20/session-1 (vremya obrashcheniya - 15.09.18).

[5*] BBC Masterclass: Subject-Verb Agreement 3 URL: http:// www .bbc. co. uk / learningenglish/english/course/towards-advanced/unit-20/session-1 (vremya obrashcheniya - 15.09.18).

[6*] BBC Masterclass 5 things about non-defining relative clauses, URL: http: // www

.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/course/towards-advanced/unit-1/session-1 (vremya obrashcheniya - 17.09.18).

[7*] Unit 1: English In A Minute. Stop to do vs stop doing, URL: http:/ / www .bbc .co

.uk/learningenglish/english/course/eiam/unit-1/session-5 (vremya obrashcheniya - 16.09.18).

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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

UDC 81’342

PECULIARITIES OF PROSODIC SPEECH DESIGN

IN ENGLISH BUSINESS DISCOURSE

E.N. Malyuga, G.O. Petrosyan

____________________________________________________________________________

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)

DSc in Linguistics, Professor

Head of Foreign Languages Department Faculty of Econonmics (RUDN University) Elena N. Malyuga

e-mail: malyuga_en@pfur.ru

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)

Assistant in Foreign Languages Department

Faculty of Econonmics (RUDN University) Gayane O. Petrosyan

e-mail: 11ga1978@mail.ru

____________________________________________________________________________

Statement of the problem. This article provides an acoustic analysis of the speech of businesspersons in the Eng- lish-language business discourse in order to determine the specific characteristics of its design. Such an analysis will also complement the content of the notion of a businessperson's competence, which implies awareness of a system of knowledge, skills and abilities that ensure his or her harmonious interaction with society and the business environment.

Results. Research results disclose prosodic peculiarities of speech design in English business discourse related to temporal organization of speech, stress, theme-rheme connections, pausing, melody and the tempo of speech. Conclusion. Speech in English-speaking business discourse is characterized by stability and diversity of temporal organization. The stress in English business discourse is often used to highlight and clarify information. The increase in terminal tone indicators in English business discourse indicates that theme-rheme relations are replaced with their rheme-theme counterparts. Pausing in English business discourse is the result of physiological, semantic, rhythmic and stylistic factors. Melody in English business discourse conveys information about the internal semantic structure of the intonation unit and its semantic weight, as well as the situational conditioning of volume. Tempo indicators of speech in English business discourse are not constant, but vary depending on the situation and purpose of communication, as well as the individual characteristics of the speaker.

Key words: prosody, intonation, tempo, stress, pause, melody, theme-rheme relations, business discourse.

Financing: Published with financial support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Project No. 17-04-00483.

For citation: Malyuga E.N., Petrosyan G.O. Peculiarities of prosodic speech design in English business discourse / E.N. Malyuga, G.O. Petrosyan // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”.

– 2018. - №4 (23). – P. 87-94

1. Introduction

The processes of globalization have led to rapid development in all spheres of social activity, as well as linguistic and communicative practices that are undergoing significant changes, departing from the previously established pronunciation norms. As a result, in recent years

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© Malyuga E.N., Petrosyan G.O., 2018

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we witness linguists’ interest in studying the phonetic aspects of various types of oral discourse.

One of the topical areas of research is a topic-specific analysis of speech features produced by representatives of individual professional communities, the purpose of which is to identify differences at all levels of the language structure, in particular, the phonetic one [1; 2; 3; 4; 5].

Given the growing social role of entrepreneurs, interest in the business community while analyzing the phonetic aspects of speech production can be considered as an important step towards a scientific substantiation of the variability of speech production phonetic aspects.

In general, the communication process is a focused psycho-linguistic-mental activity of the addresser and the addressee, the result of which is conveying the denotative, connotative and pragmatic meanings of communication by means of language [6, p. 98]. The process of voiced speech perception begins with the addressee’ understanding of a sound wave and its transformation into certain images associated with given lexical units. These lexical units have different informative density, which depends on the specific communicative situation. Therefore, each speech segment is characterized by its own “key words / phrases”, which act as carriers of communicatively pragmatic potential in a segment of speech [7, p. 269].

Highlighting by the addressee the important information quanta, which include key words or phrases, is impossible without the use of prosodic elements in accordance with the communicative situation, level of interaction between communication participants, and the genre specificity inherent in various types of discourse, in particular - business discourse.

The article conducts an acoustic analysis of the businesspeople speech in the English-lan- guage business discourse in order to determine its specific characteristics. Such an analysis also makes it possible to complement the notion of entrepreneur competence, which implies obtaining a system of knowledge, skills, and abilities ensuring his/her harmonious interaction with society and business community. The further development of the specialist’s ability to use native and foreign languages in real intercultural professional communication depends on the level of his/her business profession-based competence in a particular economic sector. This causes the necessity to determine the specificity of constituent structural elements of the communicative competence system, which would allow representatives of the business community to solve professional tasks by means of communication, both in verbal and in written forms.

2. The material and methods of research

Since the most productive approach to researching prosodic means used in a separate institutional discourse, involves the use of technical tools of acoustic analysis [8, p. 77]; this study was conducted based on specialized software Speech Analyzer 3.0.1. This software allows creating a visualization of a speech segment and determining more accurately the parameters of the main constituent elements of prosody in the utterance. The use of this software enabled the analysis of the duration and intensity of the voiced speech, as well as visualization of the pitch contour in the verbalized segment.

The research material was the audio recordings that are publicly available on the Internet, and represent speech fragments produced by English-speaking representatives of the business community. The research material is a source of methodological knowledge, and at the same time can be the object of studying in the comprehensive analysis of language means used in Englishspeaking business discourse.

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3. Research results

3.1. Temporal structure

The initial analysis showed that the use of linguistic units and prosodic means in the speech of English-speaking representatives of the business community is well-designed. This ensures that the speaker achieves a specific goal. Addresser speech is characterized by the stability and diversity of temporal structures.

«Get people behind it and then it becomes, oh, that’s obvious. You know, well, it wasn’t so obvious when it got started, I still haven’t figured out how anyone did it» [1*] (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Intonation pattern of the utterance «Get people behind it and then it becomes, oh, that’s obvious. You know, well, it wasn’t so obvious when it got started, I still haven’t figured out how anyone did it»

3.2. Stress

While studying the prosodic means of speech formatting in the business discourse the medial part of the communicative exchange is turned out to be the most informative. In discussing and supporting one’s position at this stage the greater importance is attached to reasoning. The reasoning effectiveness depends on the approach to the selection and use of arguments, the level of partners’ knowledge, as well as the speaker's ability to apply contextually correct intonation.

With proper stress and word emphasis, important information comes to the fore and is clear to all parties involved in the communicative exchange. The key result at the stage of discussion of participants’ positions and points of view should be the determining of the boundaries of possible agreements [9, p. 45].

Thus, in the following example, the emphasis clearly moves toward logical stress in order to deliberately highlight the adverb “so” and emphasize it to underline the scope of the issue under discussion:

«I believe that the challenges we’re facing globally as a business community and as a species are getting so large and so complex that the way we do business has to fundamentally change» [2*] (fig. 2).

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Fig. 2. Intonation pattern of the utterance «I believe that the challenges we’re facing globally as a business community and as a species are getting so large and so complex that the way we do business has to fundamentally change»

3.3. Theme/rhema connections

At the medial stage of communicative exchange, the intonation indicators of the tone of the scale and the terminal tone (that is, the pitch of the voice changed on the last word selected according to its meaning) differ significantly. The increase in the terminal tone indicates the replacement of the theme/rhema interrelation with the rhema/theme one, where rhema (new) is more highlighted. This mark of the speech utterance is manifested in the intensity of speech, the enhancement of its emotional expressiveness, the marking of some element of the utterance with the help of intonation, repetition, the choice of syntactic position, etc. [10, p. 89]. One phrase is replaced with the other; each one carries new information and influences the intonation characteristics.

The medial part of the speech segments under study in the business discourse is the most intense. Enumerations are pronounced with rising intonation. The end of the sentence is not always characterized by a falling intonation, but on the contrary in most cases it is rising:

«It’s not just putting higher-octane fuel in an old clunker of a tax car. We propose to drive a newer tax car that can compete and win against any country in the world» [3*] (fig. 3).

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Fig. 3. Intonation pattern of the utterance «It’s not just putting higher-octane fuel in an old clunker of a tax car. We propose to drive a newer tax car that can compete and win against any country in the world»

3.4. Pauses

Although the pauses in speech are long, at the beginning of a speech short pauses predominate, the average length of which reaches approximately 500 ms. As the conversation goes on the speaker becomes less confident in his/her words, gets excited and stammers, which leads to an increase in the pause length to 2000 ms, and sometimes up to 3000 ms. However, closer to the end of the speech, the pauses shorten again and reach an average of 500 ms, which may indicate an increase in the speaker's level of confidence.

The lack of sound correlates with the pause, which is a break in the sound or intonation separation of the speech flow. The pausing of the utterance in the business discourse is the result of physiological, semantic, rhythmic and stylistic factors.

3.5. Melody

Melody plays a key role in shaping the oral speech in business discourse and is the main component of intonation. Intensity (dynamics) correlates with power / loudness of the utterance and is an important intonation parameter that conveys information about the internal semantic structure of the intonation unit and its semantic weight, as well as the situational conditionality of loudness. In interaction with other parameters of the prosodic system, it attaches the utterance a specific meaning:

«They think it’s benighted. It is not benighted. Do I think it’s totally correct? No, I don’t go too far with it. And so, where does that leave me? That leaves me with a question…»

[4*] (fig. 4).

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Fig. 4. Intonation pattern of the utterance «They think it’s benighted. It is not benighted. Do I think it’s totally correct? No, I don’t go too far with it. And so, where does that leave me? That leaves me with a question…»

3.6. Tempo

Based on the study results, the speech tempo in the English-language business discourse most often manifests itself as a flexible, contextually changing parameter, i.e. the speaker often avoids regular speech production with a “prescribed” tempo rate (for example, an exceptionally fast or, on the contrary, an extremely slow tempo). In most cases, representatives of the Englishspeaking business community prefer to deliberately vary the pace of speech, using, for example, slowing down to highlight important words and phrases that are difficult to understand. Sometimes, from a smooth, steady tempo, they shift to a fast one, which requires quick answers from a partner. Naturally, the most optimal variant of the tempo pattern for verbal action is selected on the basis of an analysis of the nature of the communication situation, its goals and objectives.

4. Conclusion

Communicative professional competence of a businessperson is one of the essential components in business communication and assumes that the speaker is able to plan, implement and correct his/her own communicative behavior during the formation and variation of verbal or written speech in accordance with a specific business communication, speech task, communicative intention, as well according to the rules of business communication adopted in the target nationalcultural community.

As an important component of the communicative professional competence of the representative of the business community we can consider the skill of correct prosodic speech shaping. In this study, which is aimed at analyzing the speech of businesspeople in the English-speaking business discourse to determine the specific characteristics of its structure, we consider such features of prosodic speech patterns of representatives of the English-speaking business community as temporal organization, stress, theme-rhema connections, pauses, melody, and speech tempo:

speech in the English-language business discourse is characterized by the stability and diversity of temporal organization;

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the stress in English-language business discourse is often used to highlight and clarify information for the participants in communicative exchange;

the increase in the terminal tone in English business discourse indicates the replacement of the theme/rhema interrelation with rhema/theme one, where rhema (new) is more highlighted.

the pausing in utterance in the English-language business discourse is the result of physiological, semantic, rhythmic and stylistic factors, and the characteristics of the use of pauses in speech vary at the beginning, middle and end of the process of speech production;

the melody of the utterance in the English-language business discourse conveys information about the internal semantic structure of the intonation unit and its semantic weight, as well as the situational conditionality of loudness;

the tempo indicators of speech in the English business discourse are not constant, but vary depending on the situation and purpose of communication, as well as the individual characteristics of the speaker, his/her emotional and psychological state.

The authors also conclude that the medial part of communicative exchange in business

discourse is the most intense one. Accordingly, the study of prosodic pattern of lexical and syntactic means demonstrates that in order to influence the listener in the course of business meetings, it is important to highlight vocabulary that represents basic concepts aimed at an associative field in the minds of listeners. The prosodic pattern of such a vocabulary falls on the stylistically neutral part of the utterance.

The structure of the dialogue and individual remarks of representatives of the business community is to a certain extent related to the context-situation conditions of speech. So, with the help of prosodic means within the framework of a quality system of communicative professional competence of a businessperson, it is possible to direct business communication in the necessary direction, turn the opponent to his/her views reasonably support the position, and, in general, effectively conduct business.

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[7]Freidina E.L. Prosodiia diskursa i sotsiokulturnyi kontekst / E.L. Freidina // Metodologicheskie osnovy issledovaniia kognitsii i kommunikatsii v sovremennoi lingvistike. – Moskva: MAKS Press, 2017. – S. 268–275.

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