The theme conversational style

Practical usage of conversational style .
The usage of conversational style is typical of the English of everyday life. It occurs both within a family group and in informal external relationships, namely, in the speech of intimate friends or well-acquainted people. In such cases it is the emotional reaction to a situational or verbal stimulus that matters, thereby the attitude- and emotion-signalling function of intonation here comes to the fore. Nevertheless intellectual and volitional intonation patterns also have a part to play. In informal fluent discourse there are examples of utterance where the effect of intellectual intonation is neutralized, e.g.:
Mary: ... I can live like other people, make my own decisions, decide for myself
what I should or shouldn't do!
Macfee: Aye.
Mary (ecstatically): 'Oh, I it is s wonderful, marvelous, heavinly, delightful
It's the most commonly used type of intonational style that occurs in natural spontaneous, everyday speech. This variety is more familiar for the vast majority of people than any other. That's why it's called familiar. This kind of English is heard in natural conversational interaction between speakers. So phonetic stylists call it conversational. From pedagogical point of view this English seems to be one of the most useful and least artificial kinds of the language to teach foreign learners.
In conversational style the emotional reaction to the simulating speech signals is very important. So one is liable to find here a wider range of contrasts at any level than could be expected elsewhere.
Conversations are one of the most complex forms of human behaviour. They consist of more than verbal language. Communication, to be effective, relies on other features than language and a great deal on that is not said. A measure of common understanding has to exist between speakers: when this common understanding is lacking failures in communication are apt to occur. But undoubtedly the verbal part of the communication plays a very important role and has it's own systems too, but only linked with other effective ways contributed by the speakers. The full effect is achieved and meanings are exchanged even with strangers and about unfamiliar topics. So to study conversational interactions means to study some of the rules of non-verbal behaviour in relation to particular cultures end societies and also to study the linguistic rules governing the talks. It's a great problem of carrying out researches of this type of speech because of the difficulty of obtaining reliable data (people behave differently if aware of being tape-recorded).
But still it's possible to single out some common linguistic features:
1) talks of the kind are characterized by the in explicitness of the language as the speakers rely upon the extralinguistic factors - context, kinetics, etc. This manifests in incompleteness of utterances: as the context makes it clear what was meant by the speaker, thus making redundant its vocal expression.
2) by the lack of planning and the randomness of subject matters.
3) non-fluency, high proportion of "errors" involving hesitation phenomena, slips of the tongue and all sorts of overlapping and simultaneous speech.
Language functions in two main forms: the spoken language & the written language. Though the main concern of phonetics is to investigate the varieties of the spoken language, the written language can not be dismissed altogether, as it is very often read aloud, or recited, or it guides the speaker when his speech is prepared and written down in advance.
Scholars distinguish a number of functional styles of the written language, such as belles-lettres style, publistic style, newspaper style, the style of official documents that of scientific prose, which have clearly distinguishable lexical and syntactical peculiarities. Apart from a few scattered studies of oratorical and conversational styles, the styles of the spoken language are not as yet unanimously defined, though we are well aware of the phonetic differences between, say, a casual conversation and an official exchange of views.
A close examination of the speech characteristics of one & the same person easily reveals that each native speaker uses several varieties of the language. He uses one at home, another with his colleagues, a third when addressing an audience and so on.
At home he usually speaks rather carelessly, with colleagues his speech, though rapid at times, is less careless, when addressing an audience his speech is more careful. Each of these varieties may differ in the usage of items of vocabulary and in grammatical structures, but by far the most striking distinctions are phonetical. At times these varieties differ only phonetically, nevertheless they are easily identified by all the native speakers. E.g. “do you know her?”, when pronounced as [d `n ә], or again “come here”, when pronounced [k'miә] are easily identified as belonging to informal conversation.
The main circumstances of reality that cause phonetic modifications in speech are as follows:

1. 
   The aim of speech (which may be to instruct, to inform, to persuade, to narrate, to chat etc.;
   
2. 
   The extent of spontaneity of speech (unprepared speech, prepared speech, etc.);
   
3. 
   The nature of interchange, i.e. the use of a form of speech which may either suggest only listening, or both listening and an exchange of remarks (a lecture, a discussion, a conversation, etc.).
   
4. 
   Social & psychological factors, which determine the extent of formality of speech & the attitudes expressed (a friendly conversation with close friends, a quarrel, an official conversation, etc.).
   

The speaker is to a definite extent governed by his audience in choice of vocabulary units, grammatical structures, tempo of speech, distinctiveness of articulation, for “smth”. In a free chat are ‘acceptable’ (though non-obligatory) assimilation so on. He has to make sure he is understood. That is why he speaks more carefully when addressing a large audience, or people whom he is not on familiar terms with. Whereas he is less particular about the distinctiveness of his pronunciation when talking to those who know him well enough to “tune in “very easily to his individual manner of speaking. E.g. [‘lemi`si:] for “let me see”, [dn’nou] for “don’t know”, [freidnot] for “afraid not”, [s & elision, but in other more official situations they are ‘unacceptable’ with those who speak the orthoepic norm. It appears that the use of one phoneme for another as often as not a style-forming means. It may have a stylistic coloring & produce a striking effect.
Elision, reduction & assimilation may, therefore, signal stylistic differences. Take the sentence “We can trust him to do it well” said in two different ways:
st im tә 'du it wel]1. [wi kn'tr
st 'him tu 'du: it wel]2. ['wi: 'k n 'tr
O’Connor states that they belong to different styles: the 1<sup>st</sup> to colloquial conversation, the 2<sup>nd to</sup> a political speech delivered to a large audience.
On account of all that, the degree of assimilation, reduction & elision may serve to distinguish phonetic styles.
Besides these segmental features, there are prosodic features which enable people to distinguish between different phonetic styles.
Each speaker has a norm of loudness which may depart from in different circumstances. His speech is generally characterized by a more or less regular usage of certain tones. But there are circumstances when he introduces into his speech tonal variations, variations of pitch levels & ranges specific for definite styles of pronunciation (either to awaken enthusiasm & interest in his audience, or to acquire an authoritative tone, or, v.v., to sound informal, etc).
Each speaker has a norm of speech tempo as well. And he may depart from it in different circumstances. E.g., when reading aloud the tempo is more or less even, when chatting freely the variations in the tempo appear to be considerable. Pauses also help to distinguish different varieties of speech. E,g. the character of pauses shows striking differences between written En-sh read aloud & informal conversation. In the former the pauses are closely related to the grammatical structures, but in conversation they may & do appear in between words in close grammatical connection. Some of the pauses are often replaced by the so called ‘silence-fillers’ such as “I mean”,”sort of”, “kind of”, “well”, “Shall I say” & others. E.g.”It ‘was a… ‘sort of…conversation & it, went like, this…”
Some speakers, when they are greatly involved in what they say & are very emphatic, introduce no pauses until they run out of breath. Their speech sounds abnormal & careless: “He 'said he was 'going but he didn’t do 'anything to get ‘under `way & he came to the ‘door. He ‘stood there like a `dunce. He just `watched ‘other people ‘pack their ‘things. He 'didn’t 'help at `all”.
Experimental investigations show that duration of pauses & tempo of speech depend largely on the extent of creative activity that takes place during speech production. When a native speaker uses a great deal of automatized & well learned sequences, commonplace utterances, professional jargon & clichés, the tempo of his speech is higher than when he has to take serious decisions concerning the content of his speech & its form (the vocabulary, the grammatical structures, the conciseness of expressions). The tempo of speech also depends on whether the audience is large or not. The speaker usually slows down his tempo of speech when addressing a large audience. Thus, each phonetic style is characterized by a specific combination of segmental & prosodic features.
The English phonetic styles have been left unexplored as yet. Most of the research work concentrated mainly on distinctions between different types of speech activities: reading aloud as contrasted to spontaneous conversation. E.g. D.Crystal & D.Davy have noted that informal conversational En-sh as opposed to written En-sh read aloud is characterized by:

1. 
   a high proportion of hesitation features of all kinds, e.g. [m’m], [әm], [ә];
   
2. 
   a substantional amount of overlapping & simultaneous speech;
   
3. 
   a great amount of non-obligatory assimilation;
   
4. 
   a very high frequency of simple falling tones, a high frequency of ‘stepping down’ head & almost complete absence of ‘stepping up’ head; a high frequency of compound tunes, especially the fall-rise; a frequent use of low rising tones on statements; the occasional use of very emphatic tones such as : rise-fall & fall-rise; a common use of high unstressed syllables especially in the prehead; a tendency to make frequent use of a small number basic prosodic configurations;
   
5. 
   a strong tendency to use short intonation groups & to break up lengthy intonation groups;
   
6. 
   A frequent use of pauses which occur in places where they are not regular in formal conversation.