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- Title
The Significance of the Level Tone in Ghanaian English: Evidence from Spoken Discourse.
- Authors
Fofo Lomotey, Charlotte
- Abstract
In Brazil's (1985, 1997) discourse intonation model, the level tone is used by speakers to make choices that do not have any real communicative significance within the context of interaction. According to the model, a speaker assigns the level tone in ritualized, unplanned, preplanned, prerecorded, formulaic language, and in reading out. The current study investigates the discourse intonation framework. Data consisting of 13 hours of conversations recorded from 200 Ghanaians were subjected to both auditory and acoustic analyses. Results show that Ghanaians perform other communicative functions with the level tone in addition to what the model posits. Based on the results, it is argued that the level tone performs significant communicative functions similar to the falling or rising tones in Ghanaian English.
- Subjects
GHANAIAN literature; DISCOURSE; GHANAIANS; EDUCATION
- Publication
Legon Journal of the Humanities, 2016, Vol 27, Issue 1, p144
- ISSN
0855-0050
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.4314/ljh.v27i1.7