· 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.
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."
Prosodic components (pitch, loudness, tempo) and speech rhythm work interdependently. Rhythm is understood as periodicity in time and space. Subjective perception of rhythm is correlated with biological processes in the human body: heart beating, breath and so on. Rhythm can also refer to images, sounds and movements, and in a speech both can be used. Speech production is naturally closely connected with the process of breathing. So speech activity as well as any other human activity is conditioned by physiological factors among others and is characterized by rhythm.
Rhythm as a linguistic notion is realized in lexical, syntactical and prosodic means and mostly in their combinations. Speech rhythm is traditionally defined as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time in a speech continuum. We also find a more detailed definition of speech rhythm as the regular alternation of acceleration and slowing down, of relaxation and intensification, of length and brevity, of similar and dissimilar elements within a speech event. Such figures of speech as sound or word repetition, syntactical parallelism, intensification and others are perceived as rhythmical on the lexical, syntactical and prosodic levels. Often the syntactical parallelism of the homogeneous clauses is correlated with the identical prosodic contour of the intonation groups in the phrase and is strengthened by the repetition of a certain word.
In the stress-timed English language, the amount of time given on each syllable varies considerably, the total time of uttering each rhythmic unit is practically unchanged. The stressed syllables of a rhythmic unit form peaks of prominence. They tend to be pronounced at regular intervals no matter how many unstressed syllables are located between every two stressed ones. Thus the distribution of time within the rhythmic unit is unequal. The regularity is provided by the strong "beats".[45]
The markedly regular stress-timed pulses of speech seem to create the strict, abrupt and spiky effect of English rhythm. To bring the meaning of the utterance to the listener the stressed syllables of the notional words are given more prominence by the speaker and the unstressed monosyllabic form words are left very weak.
The speech tempo and style often regulate the division into rhythmic groups. The enclitic tendency is more typical for informal speech whereas the semantic tendency prevails in accurate, more explicit speech.
The more organized the speech is the more rhythmical it appears. A lecture read aloud is more rhythmic than colloquial speech. On the other hand, rhythm is also individual – a fluent speaker may sound more rhythmical than a person searching for the right word and refining the structure of a phrase while actually pronouncing it.
However, regularity in a speech chain is not realized in its exact isochronous form. Absolutely regular speech produces the effect of monotony. It means that the intervals between the stressed syllables are not physically equal. Whenever short rhythmic groups are mixed with longer ones the speaker minimizes the differences by means of changes in the rate of delivery.
Most rhythmic groups are simultaneously sense units. K. Pike finds the term "waves" for rhythm periodicity to be very expressive.[46]
In speech an intonation group, a phrase and a phonopassage seem to have similar prosodic organization:
1) the beginning of a rhythmic unit is characterized by the tone and intensity maximum, the slowing of the tempo;
2) the end of a rhythmic unit is marked by a pause of different length, the tone and intensity minimum, slowing of the tempo, generally sloping descending terminal tones;
3) the most common pre-nuclear pattern of a rhythmic unit is usually the High (Medium) Level Head.
Many of those who use language well have a natural ear for rhythmic patterns: they know how to use rhythmic devices to reinforce meaning and control the emotions of the audience. Rhythm of the delivered speech can describe the features of the speaker’s voice, the structural elements of the speech that can be characterized on the textual level, and visuals – everything that contains repeated elements.
Tension can cause the vocal cords to be too tight to follow the natural rhythms of language. As a result, the performance can be monotonous and uninspiring.[47]Professional speakers do not distort the rhythm of their speech.[48]
Loudness is a strong factor that affects perceived meaning. Human beings have a built-in mechanism that adjusts the volume of the voice to what is needed. More precisely, loudness is the attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a sound may be ordered on a scale from soft to loud[49], corresponding to some degree with the acousticfeatures of intensity (measured in decibels (dB)), which in the study of speech is based on the size of the vibrations of the vocal cords, as a result of variations in air-pressure. There is, however, no direct or parallel correlation between loudness (or 'volume') and intensity: other factors than intensity may affect our sensation of loudness; e.g. increasing the frequencyof vocal-cord vibrations may make one sound seem louder than another.
Knowing how to use volume to control meaning is a useful skill. Some speakers have naturally loud voices. However, the volume of one's voice should correlate with the size of the room and audience. If one speaks too loudly or too softly, the audience will react nonverbally. For example, when a speaker starts to speak too loudly, the listeners move back in their chairs. Or they move up to the edge of their seats, turning their ears in the speaker's direction when he speaks too softly.
Volume frequently reflects emotional intensity. Loud persons are often perceived as aggressive or overbearing. Soft-spoken persons are often perceived as timid or polite.
Volume, or loudness, is often a problem with inexperienced speakers. Some people cannot produce enough energy to be heard by others. Others blast their voices through interpersonal encounters. An overly loud voice can be irritating to listen to and sound brash or autocratic. A speaker with an overly soft voice is equally distracting. Not only is it difficult to hear and understand, but the audience might conclude that they are listening to a reluctant speaker, and will soon lose patience and interest. So, speaking too loudly or too softly may lead to a breakdown in speaker-listener communication.[50]
Besides speaking too loudly or too softly, a speaker must be aware of a third aspect of volume, which is variety. Volume must be varied if it is to be effective. When the loudness or softness does not vary, then the voice will become boring. Also, a constant volume throughout the presentation leads to failure of distinguishing the main points in a speech. The volume should be varied to avoid monotony and periodically recapture his audience's attention. Modulating the volume appropriately can serve as a voice clue, helping the audience identify the key points.[51] One particularly effective technique for attracting attention to an important idea is to pause almost imperceptibly before the last two or three words and then to speak them softly. Listeners lean forward to catch the words. The speaker has their undivided attention.[52]
However, some speakers begin at a normal volume but end up in almost a whisper. This problem of vocal drop-off is usually a product of nervousness, when the speaker either runs out of air while delivering a particularly long sentence, or prematurely focuses on the next sentence.
Consequently, shouting or whispering is a deviation from normal and it can be misinterpreted. Particularly, raising one's voice does not facilitate comprehension. Hence the voice should not be too loud.[53] To be better understood, a speaker should speak clearly, in a calm, reassuring manner.
The voice that people hear when one talks is far different from the simple tone produced by the vibrations of one's vocal folds. Resonation increases the complexity of the voice tone. The resonators of the upper body and head are the primary sources of the distinctive sound of each human voice described as voice quality.[54] By affecting these resonators, people change the quality of their voice.
Voice quality is the result of a combination of factors, most notably linked to physiology and breathing patterns. It can range from nasal to breathy and from hoarse to flat and convey an infinite variety of impressions — harsh, excited, bored, angry, amused, apologetic, sexy, conceited.[55] D.Crystal indicates the labels for the many qualities which can be produced as those that tend to be impressionistic and ambiguous, e.g. a 'cheery', 'haughty', 'sullen' voice.[56] Different vocal qualities can also be described as 'strident', 'thin', 'resonant', 'breathy', 'husky', 'harsh', 'nasal', or 'denasal'.[57] Many of these terms have negative connotations.
Good voice quality may be the biggest factor in the effectiveness of some speeches. The voices we hear regularly on television news are chosen, at least in part, because people respond positively to their quality.
What is behind this stereotypical response? Voice quality refers to the general characteristics of one's physiology and their effects upon an audience. The tonal qualities of the voice significantly affect how the message will be received, often overriding the message itself, because listeners automatically associate these qualities with personality. After years of cultural conditioning, listeners expect a speaker to sound the way he or she looks and to employ a tone of voice that is somehow commensurate with the subject. For instance, a speech on ballet delivered in a gruff, husky voice, or a speech on military strategy delivered in a breathy voice, would immediately sound incongruous. If the voice is not what the listeners expect, then much of the initial message will be lost until they adjust.[58]
Accuracy in sending and judging the nature of emotional messages appears to be related to an individual's sensitivity and familiarity with the vocal characteristics of emotional expression. Besides communicating emotional content, the voice has also been found to be a communicator of personal characteristics. Let us examine the aspect of vocal stereotypes.
Listening to a person's voice can sometimes help to identify that person's key characteristics. We also tend to associate particular voice types with particular personality types. Table 1summarizes stereotypes related to vocal cues.[59]
Table 1. Vocal cues and perceived personality stereotypes