Слабые формы слов в общественно-политическом дискурсе (на материале женской речи)

Abstract

The study aims to identify commonalities and differences in the realisation of weak forms of words and the frequency of modifications that led to them. The paper discusses the essence of weak forms and their role in language economy, modifications of phonemes and their omission; an acoustic experiment is conducted during which the following is being determined: the ratio of weak forms of function and content words, the features of the interaction between the factors of tempo, informativity and the cost of airtime. The study is novel in that it is the first to determine the probabilistic characteristics of different types of modifications in women’s speech in socio-political discourse, on the basis of which the types of modifications are ranked by their frequency. As a result, the same range of modifications and common weak forms peculiar to function and content words has been recorded. The most frequent modification was the omission of several segments, which indicates a high compression due to the fast tempo associated with the high cost of airtime and low informativity of a function or repeated word. The differences amount to a mismatch in the composition of words (besides common frequent words) represented by weak forms, which is accounted for by individual speech habits and different speech tempo.