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Articles Conference Reviews |
J.32 Intonation in SpeechJ.32 What is Intonation in Speech, What Role Does It Play in Grammar, and What Role Might It Play in Writing? This presentation featured two speakers, William Southworth Greaves of Glendon College at York University, who presented on “Intonation in English” and Peter Elbow of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who presented on “Harnessing Intonation for Writing: Revising by Reading Aloud.” Greaves began by asking, “What is discourse?” A heady question indeed! He noted that it is a “semantic beast,” and that from our perspective it is a coherent exchange of meaning that relies on choices and phonetics. Discourse is what goes on between two brains making meaning together. “Now, what I am going to say now cannot possibly be true,” Greaves joked, and showed a slide of a bonobo brain and a human brain, stating that these two brains were communicating with each other. Greaves shared some fascinating audio and video files with the audience of bonobos communicating with humans, even using English words. In one instance, a bonobo named Kanzi was communicating with Sue, a human, who told Kanzi “We’re going to see Austin!” and Kanzi could be heard replying “Austin!” Now, as someone who is not well-versed in linguistics, I found myself alternately switching between “Oh, I get it!” and “Huh?” throughout this portion of the session. Perhaps someone who had a stronger background would have understood more, but by the end of Greaves’ presentation, I felt I had learned quite a few interesting things and I had certainly been spurred to learn more. And throughout, Greaves’ use of humor kept me interested even when I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Peter Elbow spoke next on information units, intonation units, and tone units, drawn from his current book project, Vulgar Elegance. The field of literacy studies has a bias against speech, Elbow noted, and quoted Halliday in that “we look at spoken language through the lens of a grammar designed for writing.” Elbow argued that if we recapture some of the elements of spoken language in our writing, it won’t necessarily be grammatically correct, but it will be strong and clear—it will be writing that people want to read. He then noted that freewriting is one of the best ways to get close to capturing spoken language in writing; it is designed to not give the author enough time to plan and thus he or she ends up using speech for writing. Similarly, revising by reading aloud also helps an author find a sentence, as Elbow said, “that feels right in the mouth and the ear.” To illustrate, Elbow had the audience rewrite the following sentence to make it feel right in the mouth and ear yet keep the original meaning: “The newness of bilingual education means that the aim of research is more likely to be an account of what occurs when bilingual education is introduced than a demonstration of outcomes.” What a mouthful of words! My rewrite wasn’t much better in part because I wasn’t saying it out loud as I wrote1. Before we left, Elbow reminded us that nobody can write well unless they are able to make a fool of themselves—so my hesitance to talk out loud to myself in the conference room that day was me resisting making a fool of myself in service to good writing. 1 “Since bilingual education is new, the research aims more often to describe what happens when bilingual education happens than outcomes.” |