THE ROLE OF PROSODY IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGY OF DIRECT QUESTIONING IN THE DETECTIVE’S SPEECH IN FILM DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article reports on the results of experimental phonetic research aimed at identifying the prosodic characteristics of utterances manifesting the strategy of direct questioning. To unveil the prosody of direct questioning, utterances used by a police detective and an amateur detective in detective film discourse have been analysed. It has been established that tone frequency, or melodic component of prosody, is helpful in differentiating of the communicative tactics, since it has turned out to be the most varied component according to the results of auditory analysis. The results of the instrumental analysis of the police detective’s speech and the amateur detective’s speech have shown that the widest frequency range marks the communicative tactic of clarification in the police detective’s speech, and the communicative tactic of a demand to speak to the point / interruption in the amateur detective’s speech. The narrowest frequency range is characteristic of the communicative tactic of a direct questioning in the police detective’s speech and the tactic of clarification in the amateur detective’s speech. On the whole, the frequency range of the utterances manifesting communicative tactics in the amateur detective’s speech has turned out to be wider compared to those in the police detective’s speech. The analysis of the localization of the frequency maxima in different parts of sense-groups uttered by both detectives has shown that the localization fluctuations of the frequency maxima are insignificant and denote expressive coloring of the most important lexemes in the speech of both detectives.