Quick questions on Phonetics, phonology and prosody: analysing the sounds of language - Eduqas A-Level English Language

The single most important skill here is reading the conventions a spoken transcript uses. These vary, but commonly include: underlining or capitals for stressed syllables, numbers in brackets for timed pauses (in seconds), a full stop in brackets for a micropause, colons for a lengthened sound, and arrows for rising or falling intonation. Treat every mark as evidence. A timed pause is not empty space; it may show hesitation, planning, a turn-yielding cue or face-threatening difficulty.

As always, the marks come from the move from feature to effect.

"The speaker's turn is broken by a long pause (2.0) before the answer and ends on a rising intonation, and the combination reads as hesitancy: the planning pause and the questioning contour together soften what is grammatically a statement into something tentative. In the context of a job interview, this prosody signals the lower-status participant's caution and reluctance to commit to a firm claim." This decodes the notation and reads the effect against the situation.

A feature-spotter writes "There are pauses and the speaker stresses some words." Upgraded: the heavy stress falling repeatedly on the negatives ("I did NOT", "that is NOT what") foregrounds the speaker's emphatic denial, and the contrastive stress does interactional work, insisting on a correction against the prior speaker's implication.

What is the difference between accent and dialect? [2 marks]

Give two prosodic features and what each can signal. [2 marks]

Analyse how phonological and prosodic features contribute to meaning in a spoken interaction. [10 marks]