La phonologie des exclamations en anglais

Abstract

Based on a corpus made up of recordings from Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire, this article investigates the phonology of exclamative utterances. It points out that the main characteristic phonological traits of exclamations are essentially suprasegmental and are to be observed at intonational level. After identifying some of the recurring characteristics of the intonation patterns used in exclamative utterances and showing that these can be explained by the fact that intonation is iconic and semantically motivated, this paper highlights the links between exclamation intonation and the expression of degree. Reflecting on the delimitative function of intonation and the illocutionary value of exclamations, it also suggests that the study of exclamative intonation sheds useful light on the nature of speech acts in spoken interactions.

Keywords

• speech acts
• intonation
• English prosody
• exclamative utterances
• suprasegmental phonology