General attitudinal meanings in RP intonation
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Date
2008
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
The article takes a cognitive view of the attitudinal meanings of RP intonation. A summary
statement is included about previous authors’ views on attitudes conveyed by pitch direction.
Data on intonation patterns concentrating on pitch level are followed by the labels of emotional
attitudes from phonetic literature. These descriptive labels are brought into correlation
with a large number of metaphoric phrases and fixed collocations and expressions which
give a clue to structural metaphors for emotional attitudes. In this way, strict regularities in
correspondences have been found between the triangle made up of nucleus + head variations,
emotions as labelled in phonetic literature, and EMOTION IS TEMPERATURE metaphors. Metonymy
also plays a part: emotion stands for a bodily sensation felt during the emotion. These
regularities are believed to underlie and govern the use of intonation tunes.
Expressing one’s general emotional attitude by means of varying pitch level is seen as a
conjunction of two interrelated principal analogies: EMOTION = TEMPERATURE (metaphorically
and metonymically) and VOICE PITCH = TEMPERATURE (in terms of the effect of vibrations
of air molecules), which produces the expression of EMOTION by means of VOICE PITCH.
Specifically, attitudes associated with a pleasant high temperature (warm) are conveyed by
means of a combination of a high head and a high nucleus. The combination of the high head
and the low nucleus emanates coolness (typically pleasant low temperature, untypically
unpleasant low temperature). Attitudes associated with unpleasant low temperature (cold)
are produced by a joint effect of a low head and a low nucleus, while associations with unpleasant
high temperature (hot) are expressed as a unity of a low head and a high nucleus.
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Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 44 (2008), pp. 275-295