raising the pedagogic status of teaching discourse intonation

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aising the pedagogic status

of discourse intonation

teaching

Charles Clennell

At the heart of many cross-cultural misunderstandings lie problems

associated with intonation features of learner English. Failure to make use

of the appropriate pragmatic discourse features of English intonation may

result in serious communication breakdown between native and non-

native speakers of even advanced levels ofproficiency. This article sets out

a case for teaching the pragmatic discourse-based) features of English

intonation to overseas students studying on tertiary-level ELT courses, in

order to improve cross-cultural communication at both receptive and

productive stages. Drawing on data from advanced /eve/ EAP learners, it

advocates a systematic approach to the teaching of the pragmatic and

discourse functions of English intonation through a consciousness-raising

methodology that uses authentic academic oral texts.

In t roduct ion

Its not what she says, but how she says it. This clich is worth bearing

in mind when one considers the communication problems even

proficient non-native speakers face when interacting with native

speakers in tertiary-level academic contexts. Drawing on data and

materials developed for an EAP oral language programme, I shall argue

that the successful use of discourse intonation could well be the key to

effective cross-cultural communication. It seems that discourse intona-

tion is a comparatively neglected field in ELT, although there is

evidence of a growing interest in this area in recent years Thompson

1995, Chun 1988. Bradford 1988. Kenworthy 1987). I will look at the

reasons why intonation is particularly problematic for EAP learners, and

examine three crucial reasons why lack of prosodic skills may jeopardize

effective communication in on campus contexts, in relation to

propositional content, illocutionary force, and inter-speaker co-opera-

tion and conversational management. The article concludes with a brief

sketch of strategies for effective pedagogic intervention to help students

develop appropriate skills in these three areas.

Reasons why Why do many tertiary-level learners lack competence and confidence in

in tonat ion is the area of English intonation? There are a number of related reasons

poor ly for this. Firstly, the discourse/pragmatic functions of English prosody

understood and

appear to be specific to the English language, and as such are unfamiliar

inadequate y to most overseas learners of English, regardless of language or cultural

taught background. Secondly, these discourse and pragmatic functions are not

ELT Journal Vol ume 51/2 Apri l 1997 Oxf ord Un iv ersit y Press 1997

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readily appreciated even by native speakers, including teachers of

English, mainly because of their inherent opaqueness in the discourse,

and a lack of precision in describing suprasegmental features of

phonology. Few if any teachers come to TESOL courses with an

adequate understanding of English intonation in natural discourse.

Thirdly, interference from the learners may be a problem, especially if

they are speakers of oriental languages, which have a tonal and rhythmic

structure sufficiently different from English to make even basic

competence in the discourse features of English intonation extremely

difficult. And, finally, there is the problem of materials. English

prosody - particularly its discourse function - is not adequately dealt

with by most available pronunciation coursebooks in ESL, although a

growing number are turning their attention to prosody in discourse

settings see, for example, Zawadski 1994, Rogerson and Gilbert 1990,

Bradford 1988, Kenworthy 1987).

Defini t ion of

Intonation is a broad term used by phoneticians to describe the effects

terms

of contrastive pitch movement Crystal 1987: 423) on the meanings of

utterances over stretches of speech Cruttenden 1986: 9; Roach 1983:

112). Because stress on a single word or in phrases) has as one of its

chief acoustic correlates a change of pitch, we can consider both word

and phrase stress to be subsumed under the term intonation Brown

et al.

1980: 31). So intonation relates to the contrastive use of pitch

movement over stretches of speech and the influence this has on

meaning. Prosody is a broader label, which includes stress and

intonation, but also rhythm and voice quality as well as other

paralinguistic non-verbal) features Crystal 1987: 169). By using the

broader term prosody we make it clear that all these features play a

significant part in delineating pragmatic intention.

Some A failure to make full use of English prosodic features has crucial

consequences of

consequences in NS/NNS oral interaction. Oral communication becomes

inadequate more difficult for both parties, for three important and interrelated

prosody in NS reasons:

NNS interact ion

1 The propositional content essential information) of the message may

not be fully grasped.

2 The illocutionary force pragmatic meaning) of utterances may be

misunderstood.

3 Inter-speaker co-operation and conversational management may be

poorly controlled.

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Propositional

Without shared prosodic awareness, at the level of decoding messages,

content

listening comprehension in English becomes a more difficult activity for

both parties. Native speakers of English mark the propositional content

of the message with stress and pitch in such a way that the content is

hierarchically differentiated in terms of its perceived importance to the

speaker Halliday 1985: 53; Brown 1977: 90). In this example, a course

tutor is asking a student for clarification:

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1 5 6 4 7 3 8 2

\/ WHEN did you say youd give your paper?

mid/high key)

Each lexical item in this utterance would be differentiated by relative

pitch prominence, the most prominent marking 1) being the most

important item in this case, the word when), the second most

important 2) being the object paper, and so on. This system of

hierarchical prominence is sometimes referred to as tonic Halliday

1985: 53) or nuclear stress Crystal 1969: 205). Native-speaker listeners

will assume that their interlocutor will follow this method in allocating

pitch and stress until checked otherwise. Because non-native speakers

do not in general) follow this system, native speakers are obliged to

carry out a different method of decoding which is more laborious and

slower-namely, syntactic decoding, which means identifying the

syntactic or sentence

elements subject/verb/object/complement/

adverb). So when a non-native speaker asks a similar question it is

likely that several items will receive equal prominence, as in

When / MUST we \ FINish this \/ ASSignMENT

By placing prominence on three items modal auxiliary, verb, and

object) rather than one,

this Singhalese speaker has effectively

neutered the pragmatic intention of the utterance. The tutor will

have to infer for him or herself what the students intention might be in

this case, a request for information about due dates). Such analysis can

be extremely wearing over prolonged exchanges, and lead to listener

fatigue, boredom, and lack of empathy Clennell 1996).

Overseas students unfamiliar with tonic prominence frequently fail to

perceive the logical prominence of key items, and misunderstand the

propositional content of the message. For example, in reply to the

wh-

question given above, the propositional meaning might be identified as a

request to know whether the paper would be given or not. Learners

frequently have listening difficulties because they try to identify every

item of the utterance, but are unable to perceive what is intended to be

significant by the speaker. Thus, the tutors reply to the students request

about his assignment might be

The \ DUE date || is next \ FRIDay

This response might not appear to be either complete or appropriate to a

learner of English expecting a direct answer. This simple statement could

be perceived as an evasive tactic rather than a polite request, and lead to

further communication problems. Clearly, students need to be familiar

with a range of possible pragmatic choices in a given speech situation.

This can be done, for example, by exploring different ways of expressing

polite requests in an academic assignment-oriented) environment, and

examining the implied speaker intentions behind each choice.

Illocutionary force The illocutionary force or the pragmatic intention of the utterance may

not be clear to both parties. The failure of non-native speakers to pick

Teaching discourse intonation

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up sarcasm, for example, is well known. Two prosodic elements - tone

and key - work in different ways to mark pragmatic intention. By tone

I mean the choice of pitch contrast the speaker makes; in English, this is

normally limited to a rise or fall, or a combination of the two Halliday

1985: 57). By key I mean the choice of relative pitch made by the

speaker which is independently meaningful Brazil et

al.

1980: 24). This

choice is more far-reaching than we may realize. We could play safe and

remain in a neutral band, or we could be decidedly prominent in our

pitch choice when excited or angry see McCarthy 1991 for a useful

discussion on this topic). The next example shows how sarcasm is

conveyed by the astute selection of a rise/fall tone and a mid/low choice

of key. One might imagine the following comment from a tutor who has

just been asked to take two extra students into his tutorial:

you can i/MAGine how \THRILLed I was

mid/low key)

To reverse the pragmatic intention requires only an overall change of

pitch on the tonic syllable, with a corresponding reversal of tune1 on the

tail2 of the tone group3 combined with a mid/high key. The choice of

higher key makes the crucial difference here:

you can imagine how \THRILLed I WAS

mid/high key)

This is a relatively small phonetic change, but with profound

consequences for meaning. Notice how the rising tone in the second

version marks additional discourse information - i.e. the topic is not

finished - in contrast to the first version, where the dominant fall

indicates topic termination. It is worth noting that students can be shown

the consequences of such a subtle change in prosody by simply

highlighting similar samples of native-speaker texts in their natural

contexts, and drawing their attention to the pragmatic implications as

they arise. A technique for exploring this kind of approach is

demonstrated at the end of this paper.

Failure to perceive significant pitch change can create subtle misunder-

standings in, for example, the confusion between conducive questions

in which the speaker already has a reasonably clear expectation of the

answer) and non-conducive questions in which the answer is

unpredictable) Tenth 1988 cited in Thompson 1995: 239). Conducive

questions carry almost invariably) a falling tone:

you were ex\PECTing a low mark?

mid/low key)

Whereas in non-conducive questions, both the tone and key are high:

did you ex/PECT a high mark?

mid/high key)

Failure at this level to perceive the speakers intentions and expectations

can easily disrupt the flow of the discourse. And yet this is not in itself a

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particularly difficult feature to train our learners to perceive. Confusion

is often caused when students are advised that questions always carry a

rising tone one drawback to approaching language teaching from the

lexical or sentence level). Clearly this is not so, as we have demonstrated

above. Rises are given to questions when the speaker does not have a

clear expectation about the reply. So, for example, it is possible for

learners to start from the premise that they do have an idea of what

reply will be given. In speech contexts where conventions are clearly

understood - as in, say, the delivery of a seminar paper - there will be

ample opportunity to practice giving rhetorical questions with falling

tones. In an informal chat with peers, the need to mark questions with a

rising tone may be self evident. The discourse function of such a

technique can be readily appreciated when shown on a transcript and

the interlocutors reply highlighted.

In addition to this, the pragmatic role of intonation can be potent in

conveying the speakers intentions in speech acts Searle 1969) such as

persuasion, making excuses, or apologies. That this may not be made

clear on the surface is a culturally marked feature of English, so that in

our next example the tutors criticism is marked by a characteristically

low key.

you /COULD write it \that way

mid/low key)

just as

you handled the intro\DUCTion well

with a marked falling tone and low key selection may sound to the

untuned ear like unreserved praise. Examples like these are not hard to

find in the normal conversational demands of academic life, but how

seldom are such subtleties identified by learners as problematic or, more

important, addressed by ELT specialists as a problem worth exploring?

Yet such misunderstandings are common, and it is important that tutors

are able to express themselves accurately, and know that they are being

understood. There is an identifiable need for a close examination of, for

instance, the different ways tutors moderate their criticism in order to

avoid giving offence, and how this moderation may fail altogether to

achieve its pragmatic intention.

This cross-cultural breakdown in

communication can be rectified if both native-speaker staff and non-

native speaker learners are able to explore these misunderstandings in

post-tutorial discussions.

Here is an illustration of how a failure to appreciate specific prosodic

features could cause genuine communication breakdown of a quite

dramatic and unexpected kind. Imagine a university library where an

overseas student of Lebanese Arabic background A) is asking for a

library loan card. He is handed a form by an overworked male assistant

B), but on inspection realizes it is the wrong one:


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A: Excuse \ME. You have \GIVEn me the \\WRONG form

B: Sorry. I gave you what you ASKed for [irritated, appeals to others

in the queue for support]

A: \\ LNO it is the \\ WRONG form

B: OK. Theres no need to be rude

By placing the stress on the premodifier wrong, instead of on the head

noun form, the student unintentionally) turns what might have been a

simple observation into a direct accusation. In his subsequent denial he

reiterates this accusation, adding to the weight of the accusation the fact

that the assistant is being untruthful.

Negative ethnic stereotyping can easily be fostered by such an

encounter. But it is possible to make use of such incidents to highlight

the need for learner awareness of the social consequences of

inappropriate prosodic choices. On our EAP courses we now have a

phonological component which deals specifically with identifying and

reproducing prominent stress in different academic contexts, using video

recorded extracts of native-speaker students interacting with their

tutors. Non-native speaker students need to know that their selected

strategies for coping with pitch prominence in English may be

unproductive and even dangerous, as in the example just quoted,

where it would seem that the speaker was using an L1 rule that says

stressed syllables indicate emphasis rather than topic salience Gumperz

1990).

Inter-speaker

Not only does intonation differentiate the relative significance of the

co-operation and

items in a message, it also preserves the distinction between what is

conversational given information from what is new Brown 1983).

management

Let us take the earlier example from the Lebanese speaker, and imagine

how it might be spoken by a native speaker.

Ex\CUSE me + youve given me the wrong \FORM

The information-bearing items would be different in both tone groups,

so that in the first tone group, prominence would now be on the verb

excuse, rather than the personal pronoun me. In the second tone

group, the last lexical item form would receive prominence. In both

cases, what is being marked as prominent is new information, i.e. the

apologizing word, and the object of the transaction form. Most of the

remaining items are given information, i.e. information that is presumed

by the speaker to be shared knowledge prior to this moment in the

discourse, e.g. personal pronouns me, you, and the verb give. Even

the contentious item wrong may be perceived as given information, in

the sense that the initial apology set up this expectation.

The point is that the essential coherence of spoken texts in English is

maintained by prosodic features stress, pausing, pitch) which differ-

entiate given from new information. Without this phonological

coherence, described by Chafe 1992: 39) as the interrelationship of

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active, semi-active and inactive information shared between speaker

and interlocutor, the conversation can become extremely dense and

confused. The equivalent in the written medium would be a text without

punctuation. This sort of coherence and cohesion) can be demonstrated

to students in the same way that syntactic cohesion can be demonstrated,

by highlighting in transcripts of authentic oral interaction those prosodic

markers that, for example, act anaphorically in the speech situation, such

as Brazils referring tone see Bradford 1988 for exercises in this

feature). The given/new dichotomy can be illustrated in the same way,

with learners being invited to mark with a g those items that carry tonic

prominence.

Pedagogic There are a number of related reasons why English prosody is both a

impl icat ions

crucial tool for effective oral communication and inherently problematic

for non-native speakers. The question is, what can we do about it? Some

practical suggestions have already been made in the course of the paper,

but there is also a need to clarify and summarize some principles of

curriculum selection.

First of all, we need to clarify the different roles of prosody in oral

communication. These include functions such as:

information marker prominent stress)

discourse marker given/new)

conversational manager turn-taking/collaborating)

attitudinal or affect marker mood/feeling)

a grammatical/syntactic marker clause boundaries/word classes)

pragmatic marker illocutionary force/intention of speaker).

We also need to demonstrate its systemacity or grammaticality. Some

guiding principles are:

tone group divisions are acoustically recognizable;

tonic syllables normally occur on one item in a tone group;

tonic syllables are perceptually salient through pitch change;

unmarked tonic syllables are located at the ends of tone groups;

marked tonic syllables may occur on any item for contrastive reasons;

pitch change marks inherent complete/incomplete dichotomy of

speaker;

relative pitch choice is always significant and part of discourse

competence.

When devising teaching activities teachers should aim to develop

activities

receptive awareness of prosodic skills before practising production by a

systematic exposure to meaningful, authentic, and phonologically salient

texts, e.g. by doing interviews Economou 1985, Slade and Norris 1986);

by getting non-native speakers to interview and converse with native

speakers, record transactions Clennell 1995) and then getting students

to transcribe these conversations; and by getting students to mark

perceptually significant prosodic features Clennell 1986).


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I will conclude with a technique being developed for use with EAP

students at my own institution, which may be of interest to readers.

1 Record native-speaker students on campus interacting in different

informal speech situations, e.g. with a peer over coffee after a lecture;

with a lecturer after a lecture; with a tutor discussing a paper; at the

library putting in a request form, etc.

2 Transcribe these recordings and put the text on an OHT with certain

key prosodic features accentuated in the way they have been marked

in this article.

3 Ask the students to perform the same interaction tasks among

themselves, with the teacher acting as a native-speaker staff member.

Record and transcribe these interactions.

4 Show students their own texts, and invite them to evaluate them, and

suggest ways of improving the communicative aspects of their

language. Identify and prioritize specific prosodic problem areas.

5 Invite students to listen to the native-speaker texts with the

transcription available on OHT. At this point you may wish to elicit

prosodic differences as they appear to the learners after they have

listened to a tape and followed the transcript. In this way it is possible

to highlight the pragmatic/discourse functions of English prosody in a

meaningful context, and raise to consciousness both the salient form

and pragmatic functions of English intonation Clennell 1996).

Recei ved M arch 1996

Key

\

fall

/

rise

9

fall-rise

\\

extra emphasis on stressed syllables

II

tone group boundary

+ pause

Notes

1 Tune = intonation contour or movement over

several items.

2 Tail = any items in a tone group that succeed

the tonic syllable.

3 Tone group = the smallest unit of meaning in

English, consisting of a distinctive sequence of

tones a contour) and usually with one promi-

nent tonic/nuclear) syllable.

References

Bradford B. 1988. Int onation in Context.

Cam-

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124

Charl es Cl ennell

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The author

Charles

Clennell is a senior lecturer in TESOL at

the Centre for Applied Linguistics CALUSA) at

the University of South Australia in Adelaide. His

interests include phonology and interlanguage

studies, and he has published a number of papers

on his research into the communication strategies

of second language learners from a classroom

discourse perspective. In 1994 he was awarded the

M.A.K. Halliday Scholarship for his work in

classroom discourse research. He is currently co-

ordinating the MEd Studies TESOL course at

CALUSA, as well as developing aural/oral mate-

rials for EAP programmes.


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raising the pedagogic status of teaching discourse intonation

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