PROSODIC ORGANISATION OF REFUSAL UTTERANCES: THEIR CORRECT CODING, DECODING AND ACTUALISATION IN ENGLISH DIALOGUE SPEECH

Abstract

The article focuses on the specificity of correct coding and decoding of refusal utterances in English dialogue speech and their intonation patterns taking full account of the importance of a communicative context in which the utterances occur. The author states that the communicative context to be considered while perceiving the refusal intonation patterns includes the following complex of factors: the communicative situation (formal, informal), the relation of speaker’s social status to the recipient’s status (higher, equal, and lower), the explicit or implicit form of the refusal, the speaker’s socio-cultural level (high. mid, low), emotional-and-pragmatic potential of the utterance (high, mid, low) as well as the class of reasons for the refusal utterances generation “I do not want to”, “I cannot”, “I can but I do not want to”, “I want but I cannot”). In this paper the author studies the suprasegmental level means contributing to correct coding and decoding of the utterance information and the speaker’s emotional state and his/her pragmatic intention. 70 students of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute aged 18-21 took part in the experiment. The author reports the results of the study of difficulties experienced by learners while mastering intonation patterns of English refusal utterances. The results of the research prove that intonation plays the leading role in correct encoding and decoding of refusal utterances’ meaning.