Persuasion prosody in prosecutor’s speech: Ukrainian and english

Vladyslava Akkurt,Oleksandra Popova,Tetiana Korolova

doi:10.34069/ai/2021.47.11.13

Vladyslava Akkurt, Oleksandra Popova + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.34069/ai/2021.47.11.13

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Abstract

This paper presents the research of prosodic means conveying the persuasion modality in a prosecutor’s speech in court. The material under study consists of English and Ukrainian speeches of the prosecutors (the total duration time is 16 hours). The results of the experimental material examination demonstrate common and specific characteristics of prosody components (melody, loudness, tempo, timber and sentence stress) in English and Ukrainian. Pragmatics of prosody semantics and correlation between its parameters have been proved. It has been stated that in both English and Ukrainian an utterance becomes emphatic due to the prosodic means of persuasion in a prosecutor’s speech as follows: 1) changes of tempo; 2) changes of the pitch of a voice; 3) replacements of the rising tone with the falling one and vice versa; 4) usage of complex tones; 5) use of an interrupted ascending or descending scale; 6) change of sentence stress type; 7) division of a sense group into two or more parts. The above mentioned facts enable us to conclude that: while describing the first of these aspects of typological similarity of prosody in the compared languages, the parameters of the pitch component of intonation are most informative when differentiating attitudinal ones. The specificity of interaction between prosodic and grammar means when expressing persuasion in Ukrainian and English prosecutor’s speech is caused by a degree of distinction between the grammatical and vocabulary systems of the compared languages.

Highlights

The speech of the public prosecutor is a consistent part of court procedure as a part of juridical discourse
It has been found that the functions of persuasion prosody in the language of the prosecutor’s speech include the following: 1) organization and articulation of speech flow, 2) opposition of articulation units, 3) connection between the articulated units, 4) expression of relations between elements of prosodic units, 5) expression of modalemotional meanings, 6) actualization of pragmatic meanings
The important task of the comparative study of prosodic means conveying the modal information in speech in the English and Ukrainian languages is to define the similar and distinctive features in the sphere of formal aspect of prosody and its semantics

Summary

Introduction

The speech of the public prosecutor is a consistent part of court procedure as a part of juridical discourse. There are many researches devoted to juridical discourse (Baum, 2006; Dubovsky & Yermolenko, 1987; Gold, 1987, Klimovich, 2016; Schwartz, 1997; Tiersma, 1999), to the role of the prosecutor in the trial (Shevchenko, 1983; Shvetsova, 2012; Shulga, 2016) and the problems of modality in legal communication as well (Laufer, 1993; Palmer, 1974; Spence, 1996; Chemerinsky, 2003; Wang, 2004) there can hardly be found works examining the prosody of persuasion in the prosecutor’s speech. The role of prosody among the other linguistic means in actualising the prosecutor’s speech deserves a particular attention. There are many works dealing with prosody (Brovchenko & Korolova, 2020; Bybee, 2003; Korolova, 1989; Palmer, 1974) and still the problem of attitudinal prosodic structure requires empirical data and theoretical systematisation.

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