Prosody and Feedback in Native and Non-native Speakers of English

Abstract

The present chapter investigates the relationship between prosody and pragmatics from a theoretical and practical perspective. For Romero-Trillo (Pragmatic Markers. In: Encyclopaedia of applied linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, in press a), pragmatics is the linguistic discipline that studies meaning in context from a dynamic perspective, an approach based on the ‘triangulation model’, which unites the users, their (non)linguistic expressions and their deeds. Pragmatic Markers are, in this model, the elements that fulfil the essential function of feedback in communication to verify the correct reception of a message; they are the ‘go-ahead signals’ in any interaction. Our study compares the realization of native and non-native prosodic performance of feedback elements in a spoken corpus, and their differences on the basis of statistical analyses. From a pedagogical perspective, the study of the acoustic features of Pragmatic Markers that realize feedback in conversation is essential to understand how these elements function as ‘punting poles’ that sail through the flow of conversation, and how foreign speakers of English need to master the prosody of these elements in order to be pragmatically correct.