The ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic of uzbekistan

 
Unit 17. Intonational Peculiarities of Public Speech 
 
Since the main purpose of a public speaker is to enable his listener to follow him and retain 
the main points of his speech, he makes his speech as clear as possible. That is why such 
stylistic devices as repetition and climax can be regarded as most typical of the oratorical 
style. Normally a public speech falls into paragraphs and syntactical wholes in conformity 
with the volume and the type of information conveyed. All this determines the intonational 
peculiarities of public speeches.

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I.
The sense-groups are normally short. The larger the audience the speaker addresses, the 
shorter the sense-groups he uses, because in this case the tempo is slowed down and the 
number of pauses increases considerably. 
II.
1) The prevailing tone is a Fall / mostly high abrupt /. The Falling Tones in
non-final sense-groups are more abrupt than in final sense-groups. 
2) Level or descending pitch movement is characteristic of the pre-terminal
part of the sense-group. 
3) Compound tones / mostly Fall + Fall / are frequent too. 
4)
In solemn speeches Level Tones combined with the High Level Scale are
often used to convey the attitude of the speaker. 
5)
The pitch range is rather wide. 
III.
The stress is usually emphatic and mostly centralized. 
IV.
The rhythmic organization is primarily based on a regularity of rhythmic groups and 
sense-groups. In speeches in which paragraphs and syntactical wholes are more or less 
isochronous, the rhythmic organization is more strict.
V.
The tempo of a speech depends on the size of the audience and the topic. The larger 
the audience, the slower the tempo is. Solemn speeches are slower than those made on 
everyday topics. The climax is usually characterized by a change in tempo, range and 
loudness. Contrastive change in tempo, which is frequent in public speeches, makes a 
speech expressive and emphatic.
VI.
Pauses play an important role not only in the division into sense-groups but in 
making certain units prominent. Long pauses often anticipate the main information. 
Hesitation pauses are rather frequent too. The number of hesitation pauses increases if the 
speaker is nervous or unsure of what he is going to say.