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Prosody and Meaning: Theory and Practice

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Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 15))

Abstract

Prosodic elements such as stress and intonation are generally seen as providing both ‘natural’ and properly linguistic input to utterance comprehension. They typically create impressions, convey information about emotions or attitudes or alter the salience of linguistically possible interpretations, rather than conveying distinct propositions or concepts in their own right. These aspects of communication present a challenge to pragmatic theory: how should they be described and explained? This chapter examines some of the theoretical questions raised in the study of the pragmatics of prosody. It explores a range of distinctions made in the study of meaning – between natural meaning and non-natural meaning, coding and inference, between linguistic coding and non-linguistic coding – and considers their relation to prosody. Three theoretical questions are asked: How can the different types of prosody be characterised? What is the relationship between prosody and intentional communication? What kind of meaning does prosody encode? In the final section of the chapter, the discussion is extended to the practical domain. To what extent is the theoretical debate reflected in the teaching of English pronunciation? Can the theory usefully inform the practice?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The small ‘c’ is important.

  2. 2.

    In relevance theory anything communicated explicitly (as opposed to implicitly – cf. Grice’s notion of implicature) is called an explicature.

  3. 3.

    Those working within the field of interactional linguistics continue to do impressive and insightful work into the role of prosody in sequence- and turn-management (see references in Chap. 10).

  4. 4.

    The University College London Summer Course in English Phonetics.

  5. 5.

    This quote included with the kind permission of Ms Rachada Pongprairat, Assistant Professor of English, Thepsatri Rajabhat University, Thailand.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media and Communication, Kingston University, London, UK

    Tim Wharton

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  1. Tim Wharton
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Correspondence to Tim Wharton .

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  1. , Fac. de Filosofía y Letras, Uni. Autónoma de Madrid, C/Francisco Tomás y Valiente 1, Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Jesús Romero-Trillo

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Wharton, T. (2012). Prosody and Meaning: Theory and Practice. In: Romero-Trillo, J. (eds) Pragmatics and Prosody in English Language Teaching. Educational Linguistics, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3883-6_7

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