WHAT IS PARALANGUAGE? INTONATION - BODY LANGUAGE

In the previous class (12th November 2009),we learnt about an interesting topic PARALANGUAGE. First of all, I give you a brief definition about of what paralanguage is.

*It is about the how we said things and not what is said. Paralanguage is part of the nonverbal communication and takes into account emotions and attitudes.It also may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.If you brings your memory back,you might remember that we listened the word YES in different ways such as: excited,annoyed, sarcastic and many others. This word ,can mean complettely different things (even if this word is expressed in the same sentence), it depends on how it is said because how we say things can change the meaning of the message.

The HOW is a key word in paralanguage.

Paralanguage also involves intnation,empahasis,body langauge , tone of voice,word an syllable stress and so on.I found some categories of it, I think it could be interesting for you. I will try to explain them:

1.- VOCAL QUALIFIERS: This term is also known as TONE OF VOICE. There are many factors that can affected our perception of tone of voice ,increasing loudness or softness. The second group involves raised or lowered pitch,which can involve things like fear or anxiety.

2.- VOCAL DIFERENTIATORS: It refers to another way that how someone says something can be influenced by how it's said. For examples: crying,laughing or speaking in a bad manner.

3.-VOCAL IDENTIFIERS: This category refers to the samll sounds ( expressions -interjections) that we make whe we are speaking but they have a maningg.For example: opps! ah-hah! and many others. These non verbal characteristics affect how we interpret the words.

As I mentioned before,paralangauge involves many elements, another is BODY LANGUAGE. This is an essential language that takes part in our communication, this involves movements of part of the body such as: rising of the eyebrows,crossing fingers,etc.Body language can be expressed unconsciously. For example, when a teacher asks their students about the topic they saw in the previous class, the students move their eyes. It is a signal that they try to remember the topic and this behaviour is expressed unconsciously.

Another example of paralanguage and body language is one we saw in this class. When we practiced the question WOULD YOU PLEASE SIT DOWN? we said it in different ways (friendly-angry- happy), and we noticed taht our tone of voice change as well as our facial expression.

As you can see, PARALANGUAGE involves intonation in our voice ,the speed in which we are speaking ,our movements and all these words where we put emphasis. It plays an important role in our daily life in communication, I think, we as futures teachers must be taken into account this element,because how we say something can make all the difference in our classrom.

REFERENCES:

http://work911.com/communication/nonverbparalanguage.htm

http://www.linguagiodelcorpo.it/voce/

http://www.btinternet.com/ted,power/es10108.html

Here you can find some interesting articles and a video about this topic:

http://www.infohatch.com/bodylangauge.htm?gclid=CPaG1KXgp54CFQi_sgodviApIQ

http://www.ehow.com/video%204939843 nonverbal-communication-paralanguage.html

www.deltabravo.net/custody/body.php

How to Learn Any Accent

Although we are not required to speak with a certain accent, we might feel inclined towards the one we are most familiar with or the one that we enjoy. In the end, it is a matter of personal choice as long as we are understood by most English speakers.

Actors, singers, and TV / radio announcers are sometimes trained to lose their regional accents or to adopt a different one because they are portraying a period character, or to be understood easily by improving their diction. We, as future English teachers, will also need to be easily understood by students. Not to mention that they will look at us as models of pronunciation and diction.

Amy Walker is a prominent YouTuber that explains some of the basics of how to learn any accent. As she said, we have to become truly fascinated with people and the way they speak in order to learn accents. Even if you are not interested in learning a particular accent, I think her explanation can be useful to develop our diction and confidence with the language.





In the video below you can hear her imitation of various accents from different parts of the world.

RP, GEORDIE AND CARIBBEAN ACCENTS

Last Friday we learnt more about different accents. We analyzed specifically three accents: Geordie, RP and Caribbean. First of all I want to give a definition of what accent is. Accent is a distinctive manner of oral expression. As we know there a lots of different accents around the world, every country and region has a different one. It is important to be aware that sometimes even for people who speaks English as their mother tongue could be difficult to understand a speech given with a different accent, so do not get frustrated if you have some problems with it.

We are more familiarized with the RP accent, because it has been chosen as a standar pronunciation of British English for study purposes. Since we are English language students, we have an idea of how it is pronounced. It is said that this is the accent that rich and educated people use. One example is the Royal Family.

Some examples of RP accent

Ash [æʃ]

Year [jɪ ̞ˑə]

Night [na ̈ɪtʰ]

I found something that I consider interesting in the RP accent it is called the intrusive R. to an objective observer; the intrusive R is very prevalent in RP. It involves the “insertion of an r-sound at the end of a word in ending in a non-high vowel where the next word begins with a vowel.

Examples:

R pronounced

Put a comma [r]
The idea [r] of
I saw [r] it happen

R non pronounced

A comma may be added

Idea for
I saw them
On the other hand we have the Geordie accent which is one of the most distinctive accents in Great Britain. Most Geordie consonants sounds are similar to satndar English except for the “r” sound which is similar to French pronunciation, but what characterizes Geordie accent are the vowel sounds.

Examples:
1.- RP accent 2.-Geordie accent
Blood 1.- [blɐ ̠d] 2.- [blʊ ̞d]
Brother 1.- [ˈbɹɐ ̠ð ̞ə] 2.- [ˈbɹʊ ̞ð ̞ɐ]
One 1.- [wɐ ̠n] 2.- [wɔ ̈ ̝n]

Finally we analyzed the Caribbean accent. It emerged when slaves from West African and slaves owners, who speak English, needed to communicate. Some characteristics of it are:

TH-stopping in words such as think and three is pronounced using a sound and in words such as this and that using a sound

H-dropping initial is deleted in words such as happy and house

Consonant cluster reduction complex strings of consonants are often simplified by deleting the final sound, so that best becomes ‘bes’, respect becomes ‘respeck’ and land becomes ‘lan’ .

You can find more examples of this accents in this web sites.

RP
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A657560 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBXWiaY90whttp://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/RPEnglish.html

Geordie
http://www.bobjude.co.uk/greets/geordie50.htmhttp://www.bobjude.co.uk/geordie/index.html
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc

Dictionary and history
http://www.englandsnortheast.co.uk/GeordieOrigins.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northeast/series7/geordie_dialect.shtml

Caribbean
http://www.1destinyproductions.com/accents.php
http://accent.gmu.edu/

intonation

Last class we were talking about the important of the intonation.
We already know that intonation can change the meaning of the sentences that we say according to the words that we stress at the moment of speaking we can notice this principally in questions:
Consider the difference between:

* You're coming. (Statement)
* You're coming? (Question)

And the normal intonation for questions in English is:
* Final rising stress for a Yes/No question
o Are you coming today?
* Final falling stress for a Wh-question
o When are you coming? Where are you going?

Another example where we can see this fact is when we are chatting, how many times we get confused because we cannot notice the intonation.
Knowing when and where to stress the words you use is very important for understanding for example is that of stress in two word expressions.

According to the expression the place of the stress changes. In an ordinary expression the two words are used to describe something like a "white HOUSE" (meaning a house that is painted white, and not blue or gray). In this case the most important note is the noun because we are talking about a house that happens to be white or "the WHITE house" where president live. In this case, the emphasis is on the adjective because we are more interested in stressing that it is the house that is known because it is white.
You can do some exercise just click on the followings links:

http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/blstress.htm

http://www.englishmedialab.com/pronunciation/upper-intermediate%20intonation%20exercise.htm
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/exercises/exercise-english-1/exercise-english-674.php

Intonation II

Last Monday in my phonetic and phonology class, we saw the an important topic that is intonation, we saw different examples about intonation, we learn that intonation is a very important issue when we talk, we have to do the correct intonation because If we don’t do the correct one we won’t be able to communicated in a proper way, so that we can confuse the listener,

To start I would refresh the definition about intonation, intonation is a variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. (Compare tone.) Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody.

All languages use pitch semantically, that is, as intonation, for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use pitch to distinguish words in addition to intonation.

Mainly there are two kinds of intonation, the Rising intonation that means the pitch of the voice increases over time, and the falling intonation that means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.

A very good example taken from northeastern American English, is that it has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions (He found it on the street?), and a falling intonation for wh- questions (Where did he find it?) and statements (He found it on the street.). Yes or no questions (Did he find it on the street?) often have a rising end, but not always.

I would add how to mark the intonation on a sentece: for the International Phonetic Alphabet, "global" rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [↗] and falling left-to-right [↘], respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:

He found it on the street?

[ hiː ˈfaʊnd ɪt | ɒn ðə ↗ˈˈstɹiːt ‖ ]

Here the rising pitch on street indicates that the question hinges on that word, on where he found it, not whether he found it.

Yes, he found it on the street.

[↘ˈjɛs ‖ hi ˈfaʊnd ɪt | ɒn ðə ↘ˈstɹiːt ‖ ]

How did you ever escape?

[↗ˈˈhaʊ dɪdjuː | ˈɛvɚ | ɨ↘ˈˈskeɪp ‖ ]

Here, as is common with wh- questions, there is a rising intonation on the question word, and a falling intonation at the end of the question.

If you want to learn more about english pronunciation please visit:

http://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/intonationexpression.htm

EMPH@SIS

Last class we learnt the importance of emphasis in our daily life speech, we now know that emphasis is when we call more attention to the thought which we consider more important. But what do we use emphasis for? We use emphasis to change the meaning of something we want to say. We use this technique to stress that a word is more important than other in a sentence. We can see the difference in emphasis while conversation, but we must pay a lot of attention because sometimes native people speak really fast and we do not get the real idea they want to stress on, and it is really important that we put this technique into practice too.
We can not see the difference of emphasis in writing at least we write with a different type of letter.
Here you have an example:

1. Mary wants him to help her with the homework (basic meaning any word stress)
2. MARY wants him to help her with the homework (emphasis on the person who wants the help)
3. Mary wants HIM to help her with the homework (Emphasis that the person wants him [no one else] to help her with the homework)
4. Mary wants him to to HELP her with the homework ( Emphasis in the action to help her and nothing else)
5. Mary wants him to help her with THE HOMEWORK (She only wants him help with the homework)

However, this is not the only way to make stress there are other different ways, one of them is repetition ejm. "you are very, very pretty" ; by pausing before the word or phrase you want to emphasize. We must practice this kind of tecniques to improve our pronunciation and make our speech sound more natural.

Click here and you will find some examples of other ways of emphasizing a word, includes some exercises:

http://chestofbooks.com/languages/english/Composition/121-Emphasis-in-The-Sentence.html

Sources:

http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/modifying_meaning/emphasis.htm

http://searchwarp.com/swa545213-Learning-Word-Stress-And-Word-Emphasis-In-English.htm

Exercises:

http://http//www.cambridge.org/elt/inuse/sample.pdf

http://lc.ust.hk/~material/pl/u8.htm

ELISION REVIEW

As we saw on Thursday’s class, we had a short review about what linking, assimilation and elision are. But now I am going to try to explain what elision is. Firstly, I want to remind you what elision is: The omission of one or more sounds in a phrase or in a word. Some letters which are between two consonants do not sound; this refers to the sound that will be silenced. This can help the speaker to pronounce words in an easier and quicker way.

Some examples of these words are:

comfortable: /ˈkʌmfərtəbəl/ → /ˈkʌmftərbəl/
fifth: /ˈfɪfθ/ → /ˈfɪθ/
him: /hɪm/ → /ɪm/
laboratory: /læˈbɔrətɔri/ → /ˈlæbrətɔri/ (American English), /ləˈbɔrətri/ (British English)
temperature: /ˈtɛmpərətʃər/ → /ˈtɛmpərtʃər/, /ˈtɛmprətʃər/
vegetable: /ˈvɛdʒətəbəl/ → /ˈvɛdʒtəbəl/


As we noticed in the song Don’t speak, we went over some of the occurrences of elision. Elision happens mostly in songs, in poetry, in theatrical plays, in order to maintain a particular rhythm.


REFERENCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elision (examples)
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/knowledge-wiki/elision

WEB SITES which can be useful for studying more about elision
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/connected-speech-2
http://ell.phil.tu-chemnitz.de/phon/connect/elision.html