The pace of speech i.e. tempo can be varied to our mood of the moment. Fast speech can convey urgency, whereas slower speech can be used for emphasis. In public speaking, orators produce powerful effects by varying the loudness and pace of their speech. The juxtaposition of very loud and very quiet utterances is a device often used by those trying…

Using Mandarin Chinese, a "tone language" in which the pitch contours of syllables differentiate words, the authors examined the acoustic modifications of infant-directed speech (IDS) at the syllable level to test 2 hypotheses: (a) the overall increase in pitch and intonation contour that occurs in IDS at the phrase level would not distort…

Male and female, black and white political interviewees (M. Albright, B. Clinton, H. Clinton, B. Obama, C. Powell, and C. Rice) of Larry King on CNN TV are used to ascertain whether ethnicity and gender affect the way politicians actually speak. Qualitative comparisons are made of Obama's hesitations and rate with and without a threatening…

The concept of "prominence" in intonation is discussed. It treats the prominence of a syllable as a feature determined by the speaker separate from the word itself, and meaningful in and of itself. The decision by a speaker to assign or not assign prominence to a syllable (selectivity) is seen as related to the immediacy of spoken…

Presents some reasons why more emphasis should be placed on the mastery of the rhythmic features of the target language in foreign language teaching. An account of an important recent theoretical contribution to the description of the principles underlying English speech rhythm is included. (SED)