Prosodic Features of Spoken Academic Discourse

Abstract

Globalization creates a lot of language situations which have an influence on the increase of the role of multilingualism. This process didn’t miss the society of Kazakhstan, the country that is one of the multinational countries in the world, that develops the programme of trilingual education in the country (Kazakh, Russian and English). It didn’t just highlight the role of English in the education system of the country, but also strengthened the status of the national language, the Kazakh language for the purpose of preserving national identity. In order to evaluate the influence of the English language as a lingua franca on the academic native language it is necessary to have a detailed description of Kazakh academic discourse. This issue has led to the identification of the purpose of this research as a contribution to a comprehensive study of Kazakh academic discourse and its prosodic features. 

In this study we focus on the identification and description of prosodic features of lectures conducted in Kazakh. Our analysis is based on a 300 thousand word corpus of both six long and four brief Kazakh lectures. The variations in pitch range in interaction types typical for academic discourse were studied with PRAAT programme: types of questions. These features of academic discourse were selected and analyzed with PRAAT. The typical prosodic features of Kazakh lectures were identified.

The most frequently used interaction type in the lectures was (rhetorical) questions, in particular Wh-questions. Here the pitch changes its height according to the type and intention of the lecturer.

Keywords: academic discourse, lecture, Kazakh, prosody, interaction types.