Language in Use 79-80
This unit is concerned with the way in which we can change the meaning of an utterance merely by changing its intonation. The aim of the unit is to show how much meaning we can convey through the intonational patterns of speech alone.[1] For this session, the class should work in groups. Give to each group a simple utterance like 'John bought the car yesterday', 'The school is only two miles from the town centre', 'United have done it again'. Ask them to work out as many ways of saying it as possible. The next stage is to get a representative from each group to speak the different versions the groups have worked out. In discussion, build up on the board a picture of the range of meanings the class has devised. The class should be free to challenge any versions that they think doubtful and the group concerned must be ready to justify what they have done. By the end of the session, the use of intonation alone to distinguish between statements, questions, commands and exclamations should be clearly established.
[2] The aim of this session is to explore in more detail the kind of discriminations possible through modifying the intonation of an utterance. The class should work in the same groups as for session [I]. Ask each group to devise two or three brief dialogues. These should be between two people, and should consist of not more than five or six lines of not more than three or four words each. The following example may help as a guide to what is needed:
A Come in
B Got it
A Oh
B From the number two
A Yes he had it
When written down, the dialogue must not be punctuated. Exchange the sets of dialogues between groups and ask each group to read out to the class the set in front of them. Where a dialogue is so read out that its meaning is changed from what its devisers intended, ask them to read it out themselves so as to convey what they did intend. Focus the discussion upon the differences that emerge and explore with the class what it is that causes the difference.
[3] The aim of this session is to show how much information is conveyed
to the listener by the intonation alone. The class should work in the same groups
as before. Each ' group chooses two items, one of which should be a grammatical
word like 'what' or 'but', the other an item like 'oh' or 'uh-hu'. The group
then works out three ways of saying each item. A representative of each
group should speak the words in the ways decided upon and the class note clown
what they think is the n-leaning of each way of saying them, together with their
idea of what context might be suitable for them. In the ensuing discussion,
the focus should be upon such points as:
(a) the range of variation possible with different words
(b) the occasions where the different ways of saying a word which a group has
chosen could all be given the same
context
(c) the occasions where different contexts were necessary to accommodate the
difference in saying
(d) the nature of the relationship possible between speaker and listener With
different ways of saying a word.
Related work will be found in H 10.