Курсовая работа: Linguistic and socio-cultural peculiarities of business communication
For the analysis expediency it is efficient to distinguish the following three kinds of pauses:
1. Short pauses which may be used to separate intonation groups within a phrase.
2. Longer pauses which normally manifest the end of the phrase.
3. Very long pauses, which are approximately twice as long as the first type, are used to separate semantic groups.
Carefully calculated pauses, even a fraction of a second of meaningful silence, can lend emphasis to the group of words that precede it, give time for their meaning to sink in, and rouse suspense about what is to come. Some common occasions for an intentional pause follow:
· before announcing the name of the speaker you are introducing, a slight pause before pronouncing the speaker's name gives it the prominence it deserves;
· in mid-sentence — to introduce an important point;
· after asking the audience a question;
· just before the last few words of a speech.[35]
Functionally there may be distinguished syntactic, emphatic and hesitation pauses.[36]
1. Syntactic pauses separate phonopassages, phrases, intonation groups.
2. The pauses are usually made after phrases or short sentences, not after each word. However, it is not uncommon in speech to find filled or silent pauses prior to a focal accent as an additional signal of emphasis.[37] Thus, a pause can appear before an emphatically focused, semantically important content word[38] to make especially prominent certain parts of the utterance:
She is the most | charming girl I've ever seen.||
So, an intentional pause can be a powerful way of communicating. Deliberate pauses at key points have the effect of emphasising the importance of a particular point.[39]
3. However, a pause can also be a hesitation pause[40] which can be part of dysfluency. Hesitation pauses are mainly used in spontaneous speech to gain some time to think over what to say next. They may be silent or filled. Experiments show that the filled pause is perceived as hesitation conveying uncertainty and non-assertiveness.[41] ;[42] On the other hand, silent pause may be used to emphasize an idea, generate certain emotions, and enhance attention to and retention of information presented in a speech. Functioning in the latter capacity, silence is similar to white space in print advertising, increasing the contrast between the information presented and its surroundings.
It should be pointed out that our ear can also perceive a pause when there is no stop of phonation at all. It may happen because a stop of phonation is not the only factor indicating an intonation unit boundary. The main factor is a perceivable pitchchange, stepping down or stepping up depending on the direction of nuclear tone movement. The other criterion is the presence of junctural features at the end of each intonation group. This usually takes the form of a pause but there are frequently accompanying segmental phonetic modifications (variations in tempo, aspiration etc.) which reinforce this. So the intonation unit boundary is not necessarily indicated by a complete stop of phonation.
To summarize, pauses are meaningful for both the audience and for the speaker:
· They give the audience a chance to think about what the speaker said. Therefore, a good place to pause is right after the speaker makes a key point. Such a pause also adds emphasis and dramatic impact to a statement.
· They add variety. An interrupted stretch of words can get tiresome to an audience. A pause is a convenient break for the listeners, and it keeps them attentive.
· They slow down the pace so that the audience can understand the speaker more. Nervous speakers tend to speak quickly in order to get the speech out of the way. Pausing gives them a chance to breathe, to calm down, and speak at a more controlled pace.
· They help a speaker to eliminate "ahs" and "ums". People use such distracting fillers to give them time to think. The speaker can use the pauses as time to think, and it sounds more polished and professional to the audience.
On a higher cognitive level, pausing is perceived as cognitive loading.
Phrasing words for meaning
Meaning comes not from words alone, but from the relationship of words to one another in an utterance. One of the elementary rules for communicating meaning is that words that are related in meaning should be kept together. In speaking, a slight pause distinguishes one group of related words from another.
In the following sentences, the pause comes between subject and predicate, allowing an audience to digest what is being spoken about (the subject) before a statement is made about it (the predicate):
The skull of a blue whale | is the size of an automobile. A limitless amount of radiant energy | falls on the earth from the sun. The celebration of the town's centennial | continued for a whole weekend. Twenty-five million gallons of water | tumble over Victoria Falls each day.[43]
In more lengthy sentences, where extended phrases or subordinate clauses supplement either subject or predicate or both, additional pauses may be necessary:
Atmospheric pollution | profoundly harmful to our physical well-being | is threatening our very existence.
The Athabaska glacier in Alberta | as it crawls between Mount Athabaska and Mount Kitchener | grinds a channel seven miles long and three miles wide. The variety show | scheduled to begin this evening at 8 p.m. in the civic auditorium | has been postponed until next week | same day | same time | same place.[44]
Besides, it is also important how vowels and consonants are joined in the stream of speech. A foreign language sounds like a continuous flow of syllables if listeners have not learned to recognize the signs of where one word stops and another begins. Lack of attention to juncture can make a speech indistinct or hard to understand, so even experienced translators may find it difficult to accurately render a message into another language. For example, if you tell a carpenter to build a greenhouse, make sure that you don't end up with a green house. Or if you ask your secretary to get you the night rate and have it on your desk the next morning, be sure it doesn't sound like "nitrate."