Using conversation analysis to study prosodic problems in a child with language impairment

Abstract

Prosody carries a lot of information relevant for our understanding of spoken messages. In addition, prosody plays an important role in signalling attitudes and emotions. Prosodic features also constitute an important resource that participants use to achieve mutual understanding in interaction. The aim of this study was to point to possible recurring patterns in the prosodic structure of language testing activities. A further aim was to discuss similarities between English and Swedish in these patterns.The main findings indicated a systematic use of prosody in the language testing activity. Questions are mainly posed with rising intonation and answers are produced with rising intonation. Evaluations are produced with a final fall in the intonation. There was also some support for the assumption that this pattern occurs within a similar activity involving an English-speaking child and his SLT. The results of the present study showed that analysis of conversation and prosody in its conversational context is useful in order to reveal possible functions of features that would have been overlooked with a more deficit driven perspective.