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14 - Prosodic Pragmatics in Context

from Part III - Pragmatic Approaches to Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2023

By
Jesús Romero-Trillo  and
Yalda Sadeghi
Edited by
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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Summary

The relationship between context and prosody is undoubtedly one of the most intuitive ones in language. At the same time, it is one of the most difficult to describe because it is based on acoustic cues that only need milliseconds to create an image in our brain. However, speakers of a language can generally understand their interlocutors’ emotional and cognitive status through their prosodic realization. Prosodic pragmatics is the branch of pragmatics that attempts to identify the intentionality of the speaker’s meaning in a real context based on the analysis of the suprasegmental aspects of speech production. If prosody studies how an utterance is pronounced in unison with the perceptual features of pitch, length, and loudness, then prosodic pragmatics studies the acoustic and cognitive contextual parameters in conversation. The chapter will show the relationship between prosody, information, and context in communication. Starting from the essential acoustic parameters of speech, it will revise the most influential theories of intonation through the prosodic pragmatics lens to understand the cognitive adaptation of a message in a specific context.

Keywords

Prosodypragmaticsadaptive managementtonalitytonicitytoneintonationrhythmstressdynamic model of meaning
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context , pp. 314 - 328
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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