Oxford and Cambridge Universities

A: I think some -» people might be ^vquite interested >to \

„know | what >the \ principal Mifferences are \ between

the sort of education you >get \ at -»Oxford and _xCam-_v

bridge | and any 'other 'type of UniVersity Education. ||

B: > Um... ||

A: > What? \ ^V What's the 'sort of >thing \ that you would

^highlight? ||

B: _vNatura,lly \ >differences \ in education... ||

A: ^vYes. ||

В: I sup.pose... ||

A: >Well, | what the university 'offers one. | >Why, $ for

example one would >choose... ||

B: _vAh, | I _vsee. ||

\

A: _vYes... to go to 'one of those universities \ or app ly to one of those universities \ bother to 'take the 'extra exam. || B: _vYes. || >Er, | _vcertainly, | >er, | I think just >this \ I ss^vsocial life in inverted 'commas >is \ >er \ a >very \ >er at'tractive thing about the university \ >which in a way's \ certainly a | part of edu'cation you re.ceive \ when you go to 'Oxford or 'Cambridge... ||

A: The tu~* torial _vsystem \ I >think \ is a particularly good system \ >which's been \ par ticularly finely 'turned up in Oxford and ^Cambridge... || B: _xYa. ||

A:...though it _xdoes exist in Bother universities. || You have a great 'deal more _yfreedom | about what you are going >to \ what 'course of >study you are pre~* cisely going to >fol-low. || B:,Ya. ||

A: There's very much 'left >to \ one's own _vchoice. You >have... || In 'my course I remember | I could look up-» pages and 'pages of things that I could potentially _xdo. || B:,Yes. ||

A: It was _»really just a.question of.one.sitting 'out | what I really wanted to do.

The participants are post-graduates, students of the Russian language of Oxford and Cambridge Universities who know each other quite well. They are in the same age group (mid-twenties) and share the same university educational background as mature students.

They discuss quite spontaneously a serious topic, in which they are competent or rather knowledgeable, interested, but not emotionally involved and concerned.

The subject area specifies somewhat careful elaborated code of the style. As the suggested theme is rather weighty the speakers sound rather formal, businesslike, but occasionally interested and even involved.

We think that there are certain grounds for choosing this variety of a dialogue as the most suitable for phonostylistic analysis. The talk is taking place in a hostel room; the speakers are surrounded by the same set of physical objects and aware of each other's facial and body gestures.

The factuous contact is shown by all sorts of words like: yes, right, sure, of course, expressing the immediate reaction on the part of the listeners as well as all kinds of non-verbal sounds and noises like hm, mm, uhu, aha, etc.

The speakers are relaxed and not worried about the impression they are creating unlike a lecturer or a public speaker. Slips and errors of grammar occur and do not bother them. Similarly, slight carelessness of pronunciation is common, thus we may speak about occasional deviations from the elaborated code.

As any dialogue is a'simultaneous act on the part of the sender and addressee, they are both mutually dependent and adapt to the strategies of one another and to the need of the information required. Intonation serves to establish contact between the participants thus realizing the phatic function of speech.

On the prosodic level the dialogue falls into coordinated blocks, split into dialogical units (stimulus — response). Then into phrases, then into intonation groups, each unit characterized by semantic and phonetic integrity, by certain prosodic interrelated features. Correspondingly, the length of pauses between the partners' parts serves as a marker of their contact. The ends of utterance pauses are frequently absent due to the rapid taking up cues:

В.: I suppose

A.: Well, what the university offers one. Why, for example

one would choose...

В.: Oh, I see.

Occasional silence for purposes of emphatic pause and frequent use of hesitation pauses (both filled and silent) are also characteristic of this talk

В.: _xYes. | > Er | _xcertainly, | >er, 11 think just >this \ ss^vsocial life in inverted ^vcommas \ > \ is >er \ a >very \ at^v tractive thing about the university...

Among style-marking prosodic features we should mention the following:

Loudness is normal or reduced (piano expression), varied at the block boundaries. Important variation in loudness suggests the degree of seriousness of the thematic information. Sometimes the speakers lower their voices to an inaudible mumble or simply trail off into silence, which is undoubtedly connected with changes in levels and ranges that are lowered and narrowed for many monosyllabic responses.

The rate is flexible as the speakers wish it to be. A speaks very slowly, В — a bit faster, but for both of them the speed is characteristically uneven within and between utterances, varied to outline semantic centres.

The rhythm is non-systematic, greatly varied, interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards the subjective rhythmic isochrony; the rhythmicality within the block is achieved by the variation of all prosodic parameters.

The accentuation of semantic centres is achieved by the use of emphatic and compound tones (High Falls, Fall-Rises, Fall + Rises), increase of loudness, widening of the range of nuclei, changes in the rate of utterances and by the great contrast between accented and unaccented segments of phrases.

Pre-nuclear fragments are usually very short — heads with one accented pre-nuclear syllable are most common. High pre-heads occur very often.

The auditory analysis of the above examples and of a great number of similar talks and the recent experiments of phoneticians (41, 13, 29) allow us to attempt to draw the invariant of phonostylistic characteristics of informational spontaneous dialogues. The results are shown in Table 6.

Table 6

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