2 The significance of intonation
in discourse
Malcolm Coulthard
INTRODUCTION
Paralinguistic phenomena in general and intonation in particular are areas
of language patterning which have received comparatively little attention
from linguists who, for differing reasons, have chosen to concentrate on
segmental phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis. Although detailed
descriptions of intonation do exist and there is a fair measure of agreement
about the phonetic and phonological facts, at least of British English, little
work has been done on the interactive significance of intonation. Crystal
(1969) contents himself with a very detailed description of all the phonological
options without attempting to assign significance to them. Halliday (1967)
asserts that ‘all English intonation contrasts are grammatical’ and thus restricts
their significance to the language system, while Crystal (1975) argues that
the ‘vast majority of tones in connected speech carry no meaning’ although
he does concede that a few do carry attitudinal options like ‘absence of
emotional involvement’.
Only O’Connor and Arnold set out to describe all intonation choices as
interactively meaningful, asserting that a major function of intonation is to
express ‘the speaker’s attitude to the situation in which he is placed’ (1973:2).
Unfortunately, until there is some set of agreed and mutually exclusive
attitudinal labels to match against the intonation choices, an attitudinal description
must be impossible; the experiment reported in Crystal (1969:297ff) shows
the difficulties native speakers have in matching attitudinal labels with intonation
contours, while O’Connor and Arnold’s own examples undermine their claim
to have managed to do so. For example, they describe the significance of
the rise—fall in relation to a number of exemplificatory sentences. In (1),
B is said to be ‘quietly impressed, perhaps awed’ whereas in (2), B is
thought to be expressing a ‘challenging’ or ‘censorious’ attitude:
1 A: Have you heard about Pat? B: ˆYes!
2 A: Why don’t you like it? B: I ˆdo.
In other examples this very same tone choice is said to convey that the
speaker is ‘impressed, favourably or unfavourably...by something not entirely