Intonation During Casual Speech Productions

One can argue that the manner of speaking, more often than not, can pinpoint one’s social status. William Labov goes into depth with his assumption that the use of ( r ) by the New York City’s speakers has a direct correlation with the social stratification of those speakers.

Pitch of voice – making sure you pitch is right for the level of conversation and the service user you are talking too. Speaking in a low voice can be calming and soothing, but too low and you can sound boring. On the other hand a high pitch can sound shrill and be unpleasant to listen to

Verbal languages vary in pronunciations. Since, Languages are described as being smooth and light, while on the other hand, languages known to being rough and abrupt. The manner in which speakers pronounce and communicate using words, phrases and hand gesture also has a way in building the personality of the language. Furthermore, whilst a speaker pronounces words and letters that are in the non-speaker opinion rigid and tough, an image of a solid language is created in the observing non-speaker mind. Personally, listening to Hindi dialects, I myself seem to find it challenging to pronounce specific words, and an image of complexity forms in my mind. During dialect comparison, we realize that pronunciation is vulnerable to criticism and satire. Comedians during criticizing a specific group usually imitate the dialect to refer to their identity. Thus when they criticize the language they mean it to the group and their specialized behavior.

It seems unusual to start from scratch with such a thing. With there being several types of accents, why must one feel like they should change theirs? As Text B illustrates, it seems as though it is celebrities in particular that are changing their accents to fit in with ‘showbiz’ and the latest trends or for a movie they will play a part in. Within seconds of meeting someone, we make judgements about who they are just by the way they sound. Attitudes towards accents are based more on social connotations and prejudices surrounding the location or social group associated with that accent than on the sound itself.

On July 28, 2015, Thom Dunn wrote about an issue that is often ignored by society today on upworthy.com. In his article, “What is 'Vocal Fry,' And Why Doesn't Anyone Care When Men Talk Like That?” Dunn analyzes the unnecessary criticism women receive due to their use of the lower register. His point is mainly addressed towards societies trying to define gender roles through this trend. Moreover, he recognizes how males aren’t panned for using the vocal fry while females continue to be punished for it. He suggests that we should worry less about the tone of a person and actually listen to the words they’re saying. While he uses strong logic and effective style in his writing, Dunn lacks credibility and fails to make an emotional appeal to his audience, causing his persuasive argument to be ineffective.

Cinema audience often finds the connection to a film by experiencing what actors or actresses are portraying, mainly through relating with the emotions being projected on screen. These emotions can be presented in many forms in the realm of acting, but the voice plays the biggest role in all of this. This could be the reason why many stars are being hailed for their voices throughout the history of film. When discussing about voices, one could only come to the conclusion of defining it as the spoken language; words that are released from one’s mouth. However, voices are more than just language, in fact voices and language are so different that Barthes seeks to find and explore the gap between these two elements in his essay The Grain of the Voice.

In “Different Language: Current Views of Disadvantaged Speech” Edwards writes about the differences in speech between people from the middle class versus those of disadvantaged backgrounds. The key points he touches on are that no way of speaking and/or language is superior to the other, and that the way a person speaks does not reflect the person’s intellectual capacity. Edwards points out that many intellectuals believe some languages and/or ways of speaking are superior to the others, because society promotes middle class culture. Therefore, it is believed that everybody should speak with the vocabulary and/or grammar used by the people in the middle class. Having a biased view on language and/or grammar can really influence a linguists

Quarterly journal of speech Vol. 88, No. 4, November 2002, pp. 413-425, Publics and Counter publics (abbreviated version) Warner, Michael; https://moodle.yorku.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1553543/mod_resource/content/1/pub%20counterpub.pdf

The focus of Conversation Analysis (CA) is on analyzing the talk in-interactions that naturally occur, in order to understand how coconversationalists are able to take turns at talk, organize their conversational actions, or handle difficulties, such as speaking, hearing, or understanding the co-interactants' utterances (Wilkinson, & Kitzinger, 2011). The development of technology, such as voice recording and video, has provided elements to observe in detail hesitations, hitches, silences, overlaps, tokens, breaths, laughter, and/or prosodic company that are also components of the speech production (Maynard, 2013). CA, more of being interested on analyzing linguistic formulations is focused on observing how the coconversationists are able to apply these linguistic formulations during social interactions(Hutchby, & Wooffill, 2008). Critical Discourse

A professor from a well-known college is not expected to speak like a person who works in a garment factory. A businessman can never use a beggar's accent while talking with his partner. We can easily identify who belongs to which level. From their professions, we can infer their economic conditions and thus their belonging social classes can be identified. Therefore, a clear distinction of using semantics, syntax, phonology, phonetics, vocabulary or style helps us to distinguish any particular person and his\her position in the society.

Barnes (2004) indicates the choice of medium in communication affects the relationship. Vocal\al intonations such as pitch, rate, and volume do not matter when communication is written. Synthesized voices such as the use of SUI can influence the listener.

A recent phonological development in Australian English displays a difference between younger and older generations through the High Rising Terminal (HRT) which is a rising intonation contour on declarative clauses. The intonation pattern is considered a distinctive feature of Australian English and shows how speakers carry themselves as a person. HRT is used primarily by the younger demographics in Australia, in particular female speakers and has been criticised often, deeming it as a marker of insecurity. However as researchers now point out,

Although I have my own idiolect, the way I speak constantly changes. This is because I try to adapt my spoken language to suit the situation I am in. There are many reasons for why I try to adapt my spoken language some of the main reasons being that I am fearful of the judgements and perceptions that others may make because of the way I speak also being afraid of exclusion or not being able to fit in and sometimes I feel pressurised into speaking in a certain way.

There are many social variation in American English, they are associated with age, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. Recently, several linguistic trends to investigate the speech of women, one of these is vocal fry. Vocal fry is speech that is very low pitched and creaky sounding shaped by a slow movement of the vocal cords. It considered to be a voice disorder (Tamasi, P132). Also people tend to have a lot of negative attitude towards vocal fry.

Students learned to produce the different patterns of intonation for questions and answers which did not seem to be to