A study on intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English

A study on intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English Nguyễn Thị Hồng Tuyên Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 N

A study on intonation as a means of conveying

deontic modality in English

Nguyễn Thị Hồng Tuyên

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Assoc.Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Abstract English intonation performs various functions and convey different meanings

in speech, especially modality The study is aimed at: providing as exhaustive as possible a description of the basic tunes in English and English deontic modality in terms of forms, functions, features and meanings; giving systematic description of two semantic features: obligation and permission as subtypes of deontic modality in English and studying the four basic tunes in English as a means of conveying those two semantic features; finding mistakes commonly made by Vietnamese learners in using Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality and offering some suggestions on possible solutions to these mistakes and implications

on teaching intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

Keywords Ngữ điệu; Tiếng Anh; Biểu đạt tình thái

Content

1 Rationale:

In the process of learning English, a large number of learners recognize that intonation is one of the most important issues and as the backbone of English It not only causes difficulties for the speaker himself but also for the listener Since English intonation is considered as one of the most important matter and as the backbone of English, there have been a lot of opinions about this topic

In J P.O’ Connor’s opinion, the words themselves are unchangeable in expressing meaning but they are enriched in the process of using tunes What enriches the words is the speaker’s feelings

at that moment and this way of using tunes is called intonation Here the phonetician wanted to emphasize the important role of tunes in English because the speaker can use it to express his state, he can say it definitely or hesitantly or sometimes he can say it with interest or without interest

According to Barbara Randford (1988), expressing oneself and understanding other people are two of the most necessary goals for foreign language learners in general and for English language learners in particular In order to achieve two main goals successfully we must know how to master English intonation effectively It is the best way for us to express our attitudes, feelings, emotion while we are speaking On the other hand, it is helpful for us to understand other people’s feelings, emotion in their specch so that we can lead our talks to the result full of success and intelligibility Furthermore, intonation helps us to focus on the most considerable things to speak or express This make our talks more interesting and we feel more confident when we speak in public or in a crowd With the wrong use of intonation, our speeches

may be broken because the listeners do not understand what are the goals of our speeches More seriously, in some cases they are not patient enough to pay attention to us and they may try to find the way to stop our conversations as soon as possible

In our everyday lives, much of our time is spent for communication with other people and

in our communication, we not only exchange facts but also express our emotions and attitudes,

or in other words we express modality.Thus, to study modality in general and investigate how much a speaker commits to what he says in particular is very interesting and essential Modality gained much populaity among linguists According to Halliday (1985: 86), modality is “an expression of the speaker’s opinion” towards the content of what he is saying, whether he considers it is possible, probable, certain, etc For Lyon (1997), a speaker’s qualification of his commitment to the truth of his/her proposition becomes an important issue Besides, the study of modality has spawned innumerable academic papers, namely Bybee (1985), Palmer (1986) and others In Vietnam, Hoµng Phª (1984) and §ç H÷u Ch©u (1989) have studied on Vietnamese modal system and there have been a number of English-written M.A theses on this issue, for

example: Modality and Modal Auxiliaries: A systematic Comparision of English and Vietnamese

by §ç H÷- HuyÕn (1996); Modality in English by Hoµng Thu Giang (2001); A Contrastive

analysis of modal meanings expressed via Must, Should, Have to in English and the equivalent in Vietnamese by Ph¹m ThÞ Mai Anh (2005)

Indeed, learning to express and interpret modality is very difficult, particularly for learners of English as a foreign language The learners’ failure in the understanding of the modal meanings has already prevented the from getting the goals of communication As a learner and a teacher of English as a foreign language the writer has realized the importance of researching intonation as a means of conveying modality, specificly on deontic modality to get the success in communicating goals It is the reason the writer would like to choose Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English as the subject for this thesis with the hopes that the research can serve as a very small contribution to liguistic studies and also to teaching and learning English as a foreign language In addition, suggestions and pedagogical implications of this study can be utilized to aid teachers of English and learners of Enlish at Hoa Lu University

in Ninh Binh province in the process of studying and learning English because in the school year

of 2009-2010, the first English majored students will be trained to become junior secondary teachers of English for Ninh Binh Province

2 Aims of the study:

The study is aimed at:

 providing as exhaustive as possible a description of the basic tunes in English and English deontic modality in terms of forms, functions, features and meanings

 giving systematic description of two semantic features: obligation and permission as subtypes of deontic modality in English and studying the four basic tunes in English as a means of conveying those two semantic features

 finding mistakes commonly made by Vietnamese learners in using Intonation as a means

of conveying deontic modality

 offering some suggestions on possible solutions to these mistakes and implications on teaching intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

3 Scope of the study

It would be ideal for the thesis to study on intonation as a means of conveying both deontic modality and epistemic modality However, since the limitation of time , knowledge and the aims of the study the writer focuses on Intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality, more specificly, the four basic tunes in English as a means of conveying obligation and permission in deontic modality

4 Method of the study

In order to achieve the goal set from the beginning, a number of books and studies in the field of intonation and modality were collected and then studied thoroughly to set up the theoretical framework for the intonation and as well for the deontic modality.The study was classified mainly based on the basic tunes in English by J.D.O’Connor (1991) and by Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang in “Lecture on Principles of Phonetics and Phonology” (2008), “Nghiên cứu một số ph-ơng tiện biểu đạt nghĩa tình thái trong câu - phát ngôn tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt”- (“Thông Tin Khoa Học”, Số 3-2008) About Modality, the study was mostly based on the opinion of Palmer (1986)

And a combination of different methods of analysis will be used in this study:

The first is the discriptive method Basic tunes in English and semantic features of deontic modality will be described in turns to find out how intonation can convey deontic modality

Secondly, an investigation was made into the intonation and the deontic modality in order to find out the commonest mistakes made by Vietnamese learners when studying intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality by recording, interviewing, discussing with the Vietnamese learners of English

Finally, a thorough analysis on the results of the study was made to give the suggestions and implications on teaching English intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality

5 Design of the study

This study is designed in three parts:

Part 1 is the Introduction: this part includes the rationale, scope, aims, methodology

and design of the study

Part 2 is the Development: This is the main part of the study and is divided into three

main Chapters

Chapter One is dealt with the general theoretical concepts involving the subject under consideration

Chapter Two discusses the intonation as a means of conveying deontic modality in English

Chapter Three focuses on a number of mistakes existed on the process of studying English intonation, especially conveying deontic modality

Part 3 is the Conclusion: This part lays out the findings of the study, draws important

conclusions and suggests implications of teaching and learning English as a foreign language and suggestions for further research are also presented

References

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ELSEVIER

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