English Intonation revisited: A Historical Perspective

Speech sounds must have an “inflection”: any monotone delivery of utterances would be perceived as uninteresting by the listener. In other words, intonation is inevitable in speech. By intonation I mean the manner of utterance of the tones of the voice in speaking, the modulation of the voice, the rise and fall in pitch of the voice in speech. It indicates the act of performing the movements of pitch. Every “intonational performance” is original and every intonational contour is unique, because the tones of intonation are relative, not absolute. The subject may sound “old” to any linguist, phonetician, rhetorician, or even to some actors and speakers; despite this, it has been underestimated for decades. While revisiting some of the most influential studies on English oral language of the past, my goal here is to re-evaluate intonation as one of the main components of “delivery”. Intonation is a primary device for oral communication. It is high time that its pragmatic and linguistic value was emphasized.