Intonation: The Sound of Sense and Feelings

Dr. Sudip Sinha

Assistant Professor of English, Karimganj College, Assam University, Silchar.

Keywords: Intonation, Voice and Pitch, Tonic syllable, Attitude and emotion


Abstract

In our utterances every day, every time there is an intense, undeniable presence of something other than the voluminous words. It is the constantly varying pitch of the voice that comes through every time we utter words.  We call this varying pitch, this unmistakable tune intonation. The present article looks into the nature of intonation in order to throw light on how this constant change in the tone of our voice is caused and regulated by the innermost movements – our attitudes and emotions. The article also focuses on the difficulty in setting rules as to the usage of intonation in English – a fact which makes learning it an arduous procedure.


References

Cook, Norman D. 2002. The tone of voice and mind: The connections between intonation, emotion, cognition and consciousness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Brown, Gillian. 1990. Listening to spoken English (2nd ed.). London: Longman Group UK Ltd.

O’Connor, J. D. 1980. Better English pronunciation (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roach, Peter. 2000. English phonetics and phonology (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Most read articles by the same author(s)