Tone: proclaiming and referring

Tone: Proclaiming and Referring

Brazil, D. (1985) The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. (Ch 4) Birmingham: University of Birmingham.

Brazil distinguishes between five tones: falling, rising, falling-rising, rising-falling and level. Each of the five tones that constitute the system of tone has a particular communicative significance, which will hold true for all occurrences of that tone.We have to ask: What are the consequences of choosing tone x in preference to another? Let’s start investigating the communicative significance of the fall rise tone and the falling tone, the two tones most frequently found in many kinds of discourse.

Example Referring Tone

Example Falling Tone

Let’s start investigating the communicative significance of fall rise tone and the falling tone, the two tones most frequently found in many kinds of discourse.

/ r Mary brown / p is a teacher// p Mary brown/ r is a teacher/

In these examples, Brazil demonstrates that referring tones are chosen when the speaker wants to convey parts of his/her message as part of the shared knowledge with the listener, and that proclaiming tones are used as an indication of addition of new items to the area of shared knowledge. Thus, in example (a) a potential hearer is “told” that the Mary Brown who is a mutual acquaintance of both speaker and hearer is a teacher, whereas in (b), the suggestion is that, being “teachers” the topic of the conversation, the potential hearer is “told” that the acquaintance is in the teaching profession also. There is therefore an obvious correspondence between interlocutors’ shared knowledge and referring tones on the one hand, and what is “news” and proclaiming tones on the other.

• The falling-rising tone is called the referring tone, and is indicated by the symbol r.
• The falling tone is called the proclaiming tone and is indicated by the symbol p.

Area of Convergence

Hearer

Speaker

Hearer

Speaker-hearer convergence

The intersecting circles represent the world views of speaker and hearer respectively at the moment of an utterance of a tone unit.

Brazil stated that all interaction proceeds, and can only proceed, on the basis of the existence of a great deal of common ground between participants. Given information, or common ground, is indicated by what Brazil calls “referring” tones, and new information is indicated by “proclaiming” tones. By using a falling proclaiming tone, the speaker is indicating his expectation that the area of common ground will be enlarged, as a result of the listener being told something he/she didn’t already know.The state of convergence of speaker/hearer is an aspect of the context of interaction. The context of interaction is to some extent a product of the ongoing conversation: to the extent that this is the case, referring tone units can be seen to make retrospective reference to elements in the recorded text. but what a speaker may legitimately regard as being in play is not limited to what has been previously mentioned

Another way of conceptualising the significance of the P/R opposition is seeing an utterance as “loops” which represent shared understanding that the speaker takes for granted, and increments which add up to what the listener is “told”

The significance of the proclaiming tone is that, by producing it, the speaker offers to further the process by changing the hearer’s world view; the referring tone units can be characterised negatively as ones in which the speaker recognises that he/she is saying nothing that will constitute a step forward. There are strings of tone units in which the alternation of consolidatory and world-changing matter can be recognised easily.

In the example // the queen of HEARTS //

Reference and non-selection compared

At first sight, the projections made by either choosing referring tone or assigning no prominence to the same element seem to have a great deal in common. For instance, a tonic segment having a referring tone is often presented as making backward reference to something in the text.

Queen is non-selective because it had been anticipated in a preceding utterance (“which queen did you play?”). The two decisions appear to have a similar effect upon what is projected. We can further clarify the significance of both, and at the same time further refine we conceptualise the communicative value of the P/R system, by exploring the difference.

Is there anyone in the office?R1: / p I THINK Jill's gone HOME / R2: /p I THINK / r JILL'S/ p gone HOME/

In response 2, however, the fact that Jill has gone home does not necessarily mean that the office is empty. Anyone I is interpreted as “any member of the set of people who might be in the office”, and the tonic segment with referring tone answers selectively with respect to it: “Jill has gone, but I don’t know about anyone else.”

Response 1 amounts to very much the same thing as “I don’t think there is“. By making Jill non-prominent the speaker projects a context of interaction in which there are no alternatives: in which anyone can only be Jill. Only an element of friendliness or warmth toward Jill separates this response from // p i THINK she’s gone HOME //

Q: Which queen did you play? R1: // p the queen of HEARTS // R2: // r the QUEEN // p of HEARTS //

Response 2 seems far less likely than response 1 because queen is manifestly not selective. It is interesting to note, however, that if the second version did occur, the speaker would be heard as responding as if there were a choice, it would project a context of interaction in which the denomination of the card was still not determined, even though it had just been mentioned. There would be some suggestion that the first speaker might have made a mistake, or that the respondent had possibly misheard so that re-selection was necessary in the response.

The social significance of tone choice

Apart from the new/shared meanings assigned to proclaiming and referring tones, there is a further significance attached to these tones: the social meaning of tone. Both meanings of tones are always present. It may happen that one meaning is more relevant over the other in certain circumstances. It is also true that the new/shared opposition is not always present, leaving utterances that only carry the social significance.

Through the use of a referring tone, speakers can insinuate a measure of intimacy or solidarity – a kind of verbal hand-on-your-shoulder gesture. The speaker can create togetherness. On the other hand, by using a proclaiming tone a speaker can create separateness.

In cases in which the speaker makes use of the social significance of tone, the prominence will be seen as non selective and only produced to realize tone: the speaker needs to produce tone to project such social meaning, and he/she needs to produce tone on a tonic syllable. Therefore, the prominence is heard as non selective, and having the only purpose of producing tone.

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