II Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2010

In present work we deal with the term "publicistic style". We have accepted the definition worked out by G. Goumovskaya: publicistic style is used in public speeches and printed public works which are addressed to a broad audience and devoted to important social or political events, public problems of cultural or moral character (English for Specific Purposes. Publicistic Style by G. Goumovskaya http://eng.1september.ru/2007/06/9.htm). According to M.A.Sokolova the term "publicistic" serves for many kinds of oratorial activities, that is why this intonational style is often called "oratorial". The prosodic peculiarities of the publicistic style are especially noticeable in public political speeches of some politicians whose appeals to the nation are overloaded with all sorts of oratorial tricks and characterized by various con­trasts in all prosodic features to produce a complex vocal effect, thus making addresses more effective.

The aim of the present work is to identify the prosodic peculiarities of the publicistic style in Barack Obama's speech, analyze them and try to describe the phonetic portrait of Barack Obama.

For this purpose there has been taken a sample speech (Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech) and conducted a mini-research. We used a computer programme for acoustic analysis "Wavesurfer 1.8.5" (Speech Music and Hearing. Wavesurfer. http://www.speech.kth.se/wavesurfer/) to collect and investigate the data (meaning here pitch level, pitch range, loudness, the length of pauses). The data have been classified  and presented in the form of diagrams.

The high pitch varies from ~120Hz up to ~300Hz

The low pitch varies from ~100Hz up to ~160Hz

The variation within high and low levels is not great. The interval between the highest-pitched and the lowest-pitched syllables (or in other words, pitch range) should be taken into consideration.

Pitch range is quite wide (~190Hz)

Though it may be narrow (~10-20Hz) - in this case Barack Obama's speech sounds monotonous.

Loudness is varied greatly as well. It may be seen on the diagram

Variations in the voice being loud and soft are slight within the sample but the difference between loudness and softness of Barack Obama's voice is great (from ~34dB to ~68dB)

The acoustic analysis has proved that pauses made by B Obama tend to be long not only  between phonopassages but between phrases and intonation groups.

The  analysis of the general pitch direction in the sample speech demonstrated the predominant use of the falling intonation patterns - 19 cases out of 36 within a 2-minute passage. Rising intonation patterns occurred less frequently (usually in non-final intonation groups) - 11 cases out of 36 within a 2-minute passage. Level tones, mid-level, to be exact proved  to be less frequent- 6 cases out of 36 within a 2-minute passage.

We made an attempt to  describe the phonetic portrait of Barack Obama based on the acoustic analysis of received experimental data

All the prosodic peculiarities of publicistic style may be found in B Obama's speech (dignified timbre, proper delimitation, varying loudness and pitch levels and ranges, pauses explicable in semantic and syntactic terms, hence a properly organized rhythm, appropriate terminal tones and pre-nuclear patterns are used, the contrast between accented and unaccented segments is not great, the kinesic component is present - Obama makes use of various gestures).

1. Pauses between phrases and intonation groups within phonopassages are extraordinary long (up to 2.2 seconds).
2. The predominance of falling terminal tones (19 cases within a 2-minute passage).
3. The abundance of pauses and terminal tones creates a special rhythm of speech (arguments combined with this rhythm sound a way stronger).
4. Obama's spirit and personal involvement expressed verbally are confirmed by his gestures: firm, convincing, encouraging.

This work is meant to be the starting point of a larger research in Barack Obama's individual public speaking style and may be useful for those who study English profoundly or aim to succeed in public speaking.