212 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
// a UNhappy exPERience //
// it MADE her unHAppy //
// a RAther unhappy TIME //, etc.In the case of words like unhappy, a manifestation of minimally engaged
discourse can, then, be recognized by the presence of ‘extra prominences’.
Much the same is true, in the reading of longer stretches of language: the
normally observed maximum of two prominences per tone unit can be exceeded.
Just as
// she said she was UN HAppy //puts something like audible quotation marks around the word ‘happy’, so
the allocation of three prominences to the second tone unit in
// she SAID she’d HAD // a RATHer unHAppy TIME //puts them around ‘a rather unhappy time’.
Examples like these do, in fact, represent what seems to be the most
common reason why competent readers have recourse to a minimally engaged
mode in performance: it enables them to separate off some part of what
is read and present it as an assertion which the reader simply quotes
verbatim. It is a means whereby readers can limit themselves to reporting
a form of words and stop short of implicating themselves in questions
concerning the truth, the sincerity, or perhaps the present significance, of
what is read.
Noting this enables me to make a general point about the kind of enterprise
I am undertaking. Speaking of different kinds of reading which correlate
with degrees of engagement might suggest a procedure for classifying whole
events, say the reading-out of a public announcement or of a paragraph
from a book. Probably, in most cases, readers do sustain the kind of consistent
stance that would make this possible. We must be prepared, however, for
fairly frequent changes of stance in the course of some readings: in principle,
the degree of involvement can change at the end of any tone unit.
We can think of the examples we have just discussed as instances of
readers exploiting the system: of making use of the opportunity to withdraw
temporarily from a higher level of engagement, and of making clear that
they are doing so, in order to attach particular communicative implications
to a part of the text. But minimally engaged reading does occur in other
circumstances. One such is in the inexpert or unsympathetic reading aloud
of a line of verse:
// i WANdered LONEly AS a CLOUD //Another can sometimes be heard when young learners read aloud in class
or elsewhere:
// it was VERy GRAND to KNOW SOMEbody who
OWNED a CIRcus //