The Invariant of Phonostylistic Characteristics of an Academik Style Reading

Table 9

Timbre	authoritative, imposing, edifying, instructive, self-assured
Delimitation	phonopassages — phrases — intonational groups
Style-marking prosodic features	Loudness	increased, sometimes to forte
Levels and ranges	remarkably varied with the passage segments; gradual decrease within the supraphrasal unity
Rate	normal, slow on the most important parts of the lecture (rules, conclusions, examples); rate is as flexible as the lecturer wishes it to be
Pauses	rather long, especially between the phonopassages; a large proportion of pauses serving to bring out communicatively important parts of utterances; occasional use of breath-taking pauses
Rhythm	properly organized, especially while giving the rules, reading the laws, drawing conclusions, etc.
Accentuation of semantic centres	Terminal tones	high proportion of compound terminal tones (High Fall + Low Rise; Fall-Rise, Rise-Fall-Rise); a great number of high categoric falls
Pre-nuclear patterns	frequent use of stepping and falling heads; alternation of descending and ascending heads, especially in enumerations
The contrast between the accented and unaccented segments	not great

3. A scientific style talk presenter sounds much louder than an informational style reader as any public oration is produced face to face with a fairly-sized audience. Instances of diminished loudness are observed only in bringing out phrases expressing forgetfulness, uncertainty, word-searching.

4.The prosodic features of the academic style reading are rather varied as intonation correlates the lecturer's attempts toget his meaning across clearly and to obtain the balance between formality and informality. This variety is created by:

— The alternation of pauses, types of heads, pitch levels and terminal tones.

— The ample use of variations and contrasts of the tempo to help the listener to differentiate between the more and less important parts of the overall flow of speech. The speaker normally slows down when he introduces rules, terms, scientific laws, etc.

— This makes them stand out.

— The rhythmical organization of a scientific text is properly balanced by the alternation of all prosodic features which gives the acoustic impression of "rhythmicality".

— High falling and falling-rising terminal tones are widely used as a means of both logical and contrastive emphasis.

Now in conclusion we would like to say that when we perform within the academic (scientific) intonational style a certain amount of variation of all p'honostylistic characteristics is a must to achieve the goal of communication, but care should be taken not to overdo this. If a segment is overloaded with contrasts of tempo, loudness and pitch and the speaker uses all sorts of "ora-torial tricks", then it means that the lecturer performs in a different style with appropriate prosody and we have the transposition from one style to another.

We have described in this chapter only one register of the academic style. Unfortunately other spheres of discourse and intercourse in this style have not been fully investigated yet; so this field for experiments is still open and awaits its investigators.

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