INTONATIONAL TYPES IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN POLITICAL SPEECHES

Abstract

This artlicle focuses on the study of prosodic peculiarities of actual division in speeches delivered by contemporary German political figures. The research singles out intonation patterns of utterances and defines functions of intonation in producing effect on the recipient. The article provides a theoretical background for analyzing the intonation of political speeches as a means of producing effect on the recipient. It establishes five types of actual division characteristic of German political speeches and outlines its main prosodic parameters. A methodology of an experimental study examining prosodic organization of political presentations has been elaborated; changes in speech melody, fundamental frequency, stress, pausation and tempo while delivering main and additional information have been described. This article deals with the problem of creating a unified classification of intonation patterns of German, location of intonational center and intention of the speaker's communicative tasks. Intonation can signal to listener what is to be taken as new information and what is already given. It can indicate when the speaker is indicating some sort of contrast or link with material in another tone unit. Each prosodic feature performs a definite task and all of them work simultaneously. Describing melody, accent, its types and use, it is established rate of accentuation of different parts of speech in speeches of German politicians by means of logical and emphatical accents. It is generally acknowledged that the pitch of the voice or speech melody, sentence stress and rhythm are the three main components of intonation, while pauses, tempo and timbre play a subordinate role in speech. The prosody reflects in this experiment not only various features of the speaker or the utterance, but his emotional state, which helps him to present different forms of the presentation (statement, command etc.). Describing intonation types were found the most popular types in german political speech.