THE ROLE OF PROSODY IN EXPRESSING NATIONAL IDENTITY OF CANADIANS

Abstract

The present investigation is dedicated to the problem of expressing national identity of Canadians by means of prosody — one of the brightest identifies of national speaker’s belonging in oral speech. Social and personal prosodic variation of Canadians’ English speech is in the focus of the investigation. Appeal to Canadian prosodic system can be explained by inadequate study of this variant of English and its prosodic features which can serve as markers of national identity of a speakers. The concept national identity is multiaspectual by its structure and is considered as multilevel system which includes ethnic, cultural, religions belonging as well as historical community of the territory. Language plays the leading role, it units members of the community into nation and provides it with those linguistic features, which consolidate the members, of one community and differentiates from the others. Investigation of prosodic characteristic of Canadian variant of English speakers of Alberta province in the present paper is conducted with the aim of revealing and describing a set of melodic and frequency characteristics, which can serve as markers of Canadians national identity. Canada is a county which language system has a bilingual character, its language is under the influence of British and American variants of English, considerable variation of language forms is connected with a great flow of immigrants to the country. All these factors resulted in the formation of Canadian English, which has its own individual prosodic system. Revealed in the process of complex auditory and computer analysis melodic and frequency characteristic allow to state the existence of definite features of Canadian prosodic system which can be markers of national identity. They are — high-pitched level of frequency tonetic realizations and frequent use of Rising, Rising Falling and Level terminal tones in speech.