A Corpus-driven Analysis of the Use of Intonation to Assert Dominance and Control

Abstract

This study reports on one way in which discourse intonation analysis can enrich our understanding of spoken discourse based on work carried out across sub-corpora in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE). It focuses on the use of intonation by speakers to assert dominance and control in different discourse types. Brazil (1997) argues that the use of the rise tone is a means of asserting dominance and control at certain points in a discourse and that while participants in conversations have the option to freely exchange this role throughout the discourse, in spoken discourses other than conversations such behavior would be seen to be usurping the role of the designated dominant speaker. By means of a corpus-driven study, the use of tones is examined in data comprised of Hong Kong Chinese speaking English with native English speakers across a variety of discourse types in the HKCSE. The findings suggest that the choice of a certain tone is at least partly determined by both the discourse type and the designated roles of the speakers. It has been found that in certain kinds of discourse there are intonational choices that are typically used predominantly, although not exclusively, by the designated dominant speaker to assert dominance and control over the unfolding discourse. This discourse behavior does not appear to be confined to the native speakers; both sets of speakers in the HKCSE exhibited similar behavior in terms of their tone choices. Also, it would appear from this study that the extent of the power vested in the designated dominant speaker to assert dominance and control through tone choice varies across different discourse types.