Giving Shape to an Oral Text: Textual Meanings
Phonology in Systemic Functional Linguistics - The Role of Intonation in the Analysis of Oral Discourse - Lucía Inés Rivas
Lucía Inés Rivas [+]
National University of La Pampa, Argentina
Lucía Inés Rivas is Associate Professor of English Phonetics and Phonology in the Department of Foreign Languages, National University of La Pampa, Argentina.
Description
This chapter will describe the role of intonation in organizing an oral text. Phonological prosody constitutes the clue that tells listeners about logico-semantic relations in texts and about the structure of the oral text, whether they should interpret what they are listening to as something new, or whether the text is coming to an end. Phonological prosody also indicates what information is being foregrounded or backgrounded, what constitutes major information and what is subsidiary.