Ph.D.

Proposal Title Influence of English Intonation by Thai Speakers and Interpretation of Pragmatic Meaning

upon Attitude

ResearcherMr.Thanin Kong-in Rationale

consideration, does not only contribute to success in nearspeakers and listeners understand the same matter very clearly. Finch (2000: 51) stated that intonation is

Intonation, when properly used taking context into

native foreign language pronunciation, but it also helps both

acknowledged to be crucially in both the construction of decisions about the words we are going to use and the

speech and the determination of meaning. Apart from making syntactic pattern we are going to adopt, we may have to

choose from a wide range of possible intonation variants. In the same way as claimed by Hirschberg and Pierrehumbert (1986) and Catford (1988), they raised a sample of using pith for finality of utterances. rising pith to signal topic initialization whereas the falling

2 component in effective pronunciation, particularly for English line with Governments policy in terms of foreign language learning enhancement for those students to enroll the basic Furthermore, intonation is thought to be the important

as a global language that is necessary in developing country in

education institutes e.g. Prathomsuksa 1 by ranking English at National Primary Education Commission, 2002: 35). As a

the top of the list as number 1 second language (Office of the matter of fact, lack of prosodic lessons, including intonation of Basic Education Commission. As Tuaycharoen (2006)

practice has been widely found in many schools under Office investigated the deterrence variables of Thai students potential English spoke English with a Thai accent and never discussed

in learning English, she found that 93.10% of Thai teachers of the prosodic lessons to improve the students accent. This fact intonation to communicative competence and proficiency has 1988; Thompson, 1995).

is in line with the assumption that fundamental contribution of largely been neglected in foreign language classrooms (Chun, To extend the reflection of such a problem, examining

the relation between intonation and listeners attitude as

functionally suggested by academics (Cruttenden: 1981,

Haan: 2002, Grice and Savino: 2003, and afov: 2004). Once the speaker is not aware of using the right intonation

3 pattern, he might face communication breakdown unavoidably. The sample raised by Gumperz (1982) indicates the negative attitudes in the wake of inattentive use of intonation. It narrates the scene in London's Heathrow

Airport. The airport staff who ate in the employees' cafeteria complained of rudeness by cafeteria employees from India by British women. Asian women also complained of and Pakistan who had been hired for jobs traditionally held discrimination. Gumperz taped communication on the job to view personal interaction, and instructed the Asian and British employees to view the tape together. When

customers coming through the cafeteria line requested meat,

the server was obligated to find out if they wanted gravy on women confronted with the same dilemma also stated

it or not. The British women would state, 'Gravy?' The Asian 'Gravy, but instead of a rise in their intonation to indicate a session, the Asian women said they didnt understand why the same thing as the British women. The British women

question, their intonation fell at the end. During the workshop they were getting negative reactions, since they were saying pointed out that, although they were saying the same word, they weren't saying the same thing'Gravy?'-with a rise in the intonation, means a question; 'Would you like gravy?'

4 The same word spoken with a fall in the intonation seems to mean, 'This is gravy, take it or leave it.' More interestingly speaking, intonation does not only

have an effect on listeners attitude, but it might also lead to some specific interpretation of pragmatic meaning. Previous groups of speech act like what found by Face (2003) and phonetic and phrasal properties of unscripted speech studies showed dependency of intonation patterns on various Prieto (2004): the investigation has uncovered that certain declarative intonation can vary according to pragmatic

meaning. Little researches aimed to propose the intonation as independent variable such as Hidalgo Navarro (1998, 2001) rises and falls serve particular pragmatic functions, such as emphasizing words, giving orders and expressing humor, among others. These studies also indicate that pragmatic worked on colloquial Peninsular Spanish describes how tonal

categories of interrogatives are differentiated based on tonal or ironic connotations have a final rise, where as those leading to a topic change tend to have a final fall. Henceforth, it is quite challenging to analyze those

rises or falls. For example, interrogatives carrying humoristic

interpretation based on speech act theory by Searle (1976) categorizing five types of speech acts, i.e. representatives, directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations.

5 the way to study the influence of English intonation patterns used by Thai speakers as well as their correlation with listeners attitude and interpretation of speakers meaning. Objectives From aforementioned rationale, the researcher propose

Thai speakers

1. To study the English intonational variants spoken by 2. To study the listeners attitude towards English 3. To study pragmatic interpretation of listeners from 4. To study the correlation between the English

intonational variants spoken by Thai speakers

the English intonational variants spoken by Thai speakers

intonational variants spoken by Thai speakers with listeners attitude and pragmatic interpretation Theoretical Framework

researcher adopts Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990)

1. To analyze English intonational variants, the

intonation analysis model which label the decomposition into morpheme which carries a meaning. In addition, the

sequence s of tones. Each tone is regarded as an intonational meanings of intonation contours are associated with attitudes and beliefs of speaker and hearer. According to this model,

6 the tones are divided into three categories: pitch accents, either a high (H) tone or a low (L) tone. phrase accents, and boundary tones. Each tone consists of 2. Attitude of listeners acting as the judges towards will

be measured through applying matched-guise technique

presented by Lambert et al. (1960) to alleviate likelihood of conscious stereotypes prevalent in community rather than actual attitudes. Besides, the researcher can then

see whether some of the traits are more strongly associated with one or the other of the two varieties. The judges will hear Thai-English utterances alternatively without knowing design of experiment is shown in figure 1 below: technique by single group of judges All judges listen to:

that those utterances are spoken by the same speakers. The Figure 1 Assessment f listeners attitude after matched-guise

Filler - Guise A - Filler - Filler - Filler - Guise B

STATISTICAL COMPARISON

in Thai by sample group with various styles obtained

The word Filler refers to distractive utterances spoken

through personal data interview. As for Guise A and

Guise B, they are the hidden Thai and English utterances respectively with intonational patterns used for listeners to rate their attitude unconsciously. This technique will

7 Incidentally mislead the judges as thinking that they are evaluating the personality of more than 1 speakers through 5that are polar opposite in 11 aspects: 5) introversion 6) dominance orderliness 1)

point rating scale whose endpoints are described by adjectives reliability 2) ambitiousness 3) sense of humour 4) politeness leadership 9) attractiveness 10) self-confidence and 11) 3. Speakers meaning is analyzed based on Searles (1976) 7) intelligence 8)

5 groups of speech act category: declarative.

Representative, directive, commissive, expressive, and

Research Methodology

correspondingly to the objectives as follows: 1. Literature Review

There are 4 steps of methodology to investigate

analysis, language attitude evaluation, and speech act. 2. Selection of population and sample group The population includes 550 undergraduates

The researcher studies theories of English intonation

majoring in English from Faculty of Education of

Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University. From this number,

only 15 sample group will be obtained using questionnaire on

8 personal data particularly focused on those who are of countries. Bangkok origin and never move to another domicile or 3. Data Collection

Thai while recording all conversations which will be edited and saved into file database. B

The researcher interviews the sample group in

3.1 Collection of Guise A and Filler

3.2 Collection of English Intonation or Guise Map task is adopted to elicit natural

speech from sample group who will be asked to pair up and keep English conversation for such a whole activity. This forces them to create semi-spontaneous monologue during other possible noise. Also, the recordings from the task should be processed computationally. 3.3 Collection of Attitudinal Data

their problem solving and helps avoid speech overlapping and

speakers acting as judges is asked to listen to the edited

A group of approximately 20 native English

utterances gained in 3.1 and 3.2 and rate the personality of be informed to hear 15 sets of sound data.

the speaker according to matched-guise technique. They will

9 Each set is consisted of 6 utterances spoken by 6 speakers. (Actually, those speeches are produces by the same individual. See Figure 1, p.3) Next, the judges have to complete the 5-point rating scale evaluation form as introduced in theoretical framework item 2.

3.4 Collection of Pragmatic Interpretation Data Another questionnaire is designed to

examine the interpretation of speakers meaning from both

groups of people: one is the groups pf speakers themselves and the other is the same group of foreigners in 3.3. They are ask to categorized the utterances heard into the speech act group after their opinions. The outcome from both group will be analyzed comparatively and discussed further. 4. Data Analysis

program Praat version 5225 to measure fundamental Pierrehumbert and Hirschbergs model.

4.1 Acoustic analysis can be implemented using

frequency (Hz) along with intonational analysis based on 4.2 T-test is adopted to find significant difference

in positive and negative attitude of English intonation spoken by Thai speakers

10 in grouping speakers meaning into speech act group by speakers themselves and listeners 4.3 T-test is adopted to find significant difference

to analyze relation between English intonation pattern and listeners attitude and pragmatic interpretation. References

4.4 Pearsons correlation coefficient is used

Catford, C. (1988), A practical introduction to Phonetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. Chun, D. (1988) The neglected role of intonation in communicative competence and proficiency. Modern Language Journal,Vol.72 No.3: 295-303.

Cruttenden, A. (1981). Falls and Rises: meaning and universals. Journal of Linguistics 17: 77-91. between lab speech and Linguistics 2:115-31. Palgrave Face, T. (2003). Intonation in Spanish declaratives: differences spontaneous speech. Catalan Journal of

Finch, G. (2000). Linguistic terms and concepts. New York: Grice, M. and Savino, M. (2003). Map Task in Italian: Asking Questions about Given, Accessible and New Information. Catalan Journal of

11 Linguistics 2: 153-180. University Press. Gumperz, J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge

Haan, J. (2002). Speaking of questions. An exploration of Dutch question intonation. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Nijmegen.

Hidalgo Navarro, A. (1998). Expresividad y funcin pragmtica de la entonacin en la Oralia 1: 71-93. conversacin coloquial: algunos usos frecuentes.

Hidalgo Navarro, A. (2001). Modalidad oracional y entonacin: notas sobre el funcionamiento pragmtico de los rasgos suprasegmentales en la

conversacin. Moenia 7: 271-92.

Hirschberg, J. and Pierrehumbert, J. (1986). Intonational Structuring of Discourse, Proceedings of Computational Linguistics: 136-144. (1960). Evaluational reactions to Social Psychology 60.1: 44-51. the 24th Meeting of the Association for

Lambert, W.E., R.C. Hodgson, R.C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum. spoken language. Journal of Abnormal and

Office of the National Primary Education Commission. (2002).

12 Learning sources in educational institutes Printing Press. and community. Bangkok: Religious Affairs

Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of (Eds.), Intentions in communication discourse. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan & M. Pollack

Prieto, P. (2004). Phonological phrasing in Spanish. Barclona: Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, ms. Questions Workshop Reader in February 2004: 71-94. in Society 5: 1-23. afov, M. (2004). On the semantics of the final rise in English. Preparation of the Crispi Volume, Amsterdam,

(pp. 271-311). Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Searle, J. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language Thompson, S.E. (1995). Teaching intonation on questions. ELT Journal, Vol. 49 No.3: 235-242. Tuaychareon, P. (2006). Thai Students Potential in Learning English and Its Deterrence Variables. 2006: 67-98. Journal of Liberal Arts. Vol.6 No.1. January-June