29. The problems of classification of phonetic styles. Phonetic style-forming means in English.

Phonetics studies the way phonetic means are used in this or that par-ticular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of fac-tors, which are referred to as extralinguistic. The aim of phonetics is to analyze all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the phonetic features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such fea-tures have been used and to classify them into categories, based upon a view of their function.

Style-forming and style-modifying factors:

Style forming factor is the aim or purpose of the utterance. The aim is the strategy of the speaker.

• the form of communication (monologue or dialogue);

• the speaker’s attitude to the situation (emotions, thoughts, etc);

• the degree of formality ( formal – informal);

• the degree of spontaneity or of preparedness, the speak-er’s educational background played a great role.

Styles of speech according to the purpose of communication.

1. Informational

2. academic (scientific)

3. publicistic (oratorical)

4. declamatory (artistic)

5. colloquial (familiar)

1. Using the informational style the speaker ought to be careful not to distract the listener by what he is saying (TV-announcers). Written representation of oral and prepared speech.

2. Scientific style is used in lectures or science subjects or when reading out loud a piece of scientific prose. The purpose is to attract the listener’s attention to what is the most important in the lecture.

3. Publicistic style is used by politicians, the purpose is to except the influence of the listener to convince him of something, and make him accept the speaker’s point of view.

4. It is used in reading poetry, prose aloud, in stage speech to appeal to the feelings of the listener.

5. Conversational formulae familiar of everyday communication are used in speech of friends within similar groups. It can have a wide range of intonation patterns.

Estuary English

The dialect of English widely spoken by many people from the South and South East of England, including parts of London, although Received Pronunciation (the Queen's English) is far more common.

Received Pronunciation can be heard in the same areas as Estuary English, however RP tends to be spoken by the upper classes while Estuary English is spoken by the lower and working class.

Estuary English is also far more common in Younger people, with parents who have RP. So the decline in RP is likely to continue and be replaced with Estuary.

Many features of the Estuary accent include:

1) The broad A. This includes pronouncing words such as 'fast > farst' and 'path > parth'.

2) Regular Glottal stops. This is not pronouncing the letter 'T' in most words: water is pronounced war'er.

3) Th-Fronting. This is pronouncing most words that start a 'Th' with an F: 'Three > free', 'think > fink' and 'north > norf'. If 'th' is in the middle of a word, it is usually replaced with a 'V': 'other > ovver' 'southern > sovvern'.

4) L-vocalisation. This is not pronouncing the letter 'L' in certain words and tends to be ended with a 'w' sound instead: 'fall > faw' and 'milk > miwk'.

5) H-Dropping. This is not pronouncing the letter 'H' at the start of most words: 'here > ere' and 'hate > ate'.

6) Yod-coalescence. The use of the affricates [dʒ] and [tʃ] instead of the clusters [dj] and [tj] in words like dune and Tuesday. Thus, these words sound like June and choose day, respectively.

7) The intonation in Estuary English is characterized by frequent prominence being given to prepositions and auxiliary verbs which are not normally stressed in General R.P: "Let us get TO the point."

Other things are included in the accent other than just the pronunciation. This includes double negatives and finishing a lot of sentences with questions even if they are not asking a question: "We're going later, aren't we?", "I said that, didn't I?"