Declamatory Style

Student: Olena Hurman

Declamatory Style

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Definition

Declamatory is the style of declamation. This is a highly emotional and expressive intonational style. This style can be heard on the stage, on the screen, in a TV studio.

• loudness varied according to the size of the audience and to the emotional setting;
• pauses are long especially between the passages, prolonged emphatic pauses are used to underline the emphasis;
• rhythm is properly organized;
• common use of categoric low and high falls in final and initial intonation groups and on semantic centres

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Phonostylistic characteristics

• In declamatory style the emotional role of intonation increases, thereby intonation patterns used for intellectual and emotional purposes have an equal share.
• In the pre-nuclear part, the Law Pre-Head may be combined with the Stepping Head, the Broken Stepping Head.
• The nuclear tone is generally the Law Fall or the High Fall. The Low Rise, the Rise-Fall and the Mid-Level are rarely used
• The speed of utterance is relatively slow and as a result there are no marked variations in rhythm.

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Main features

The prosodic organization of such texts will vary greatly, de­pending on the type of the theatrical performance — whether it is a tragedy, drama or comedy — and, of course, on the social factors — the social and cultural background of the play charac­ters, their relationship, extralinguistic context, and so on.

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The prosodic organization

Acting is a two-way conversation, players respond very di­rectly and promptly to the "feedback" they get from the audi­ence; the "feedback" in their case being almost certainly commu­nal, collective, non-verbal language. Methods of achieving, stim­ulating and maintaining this "conversation" with their audience must inevitably be the mainspring of the actors' "training".

Distancing, posture, gesture, facial ex­pression and timing — all these facets of their art are as impor­tant as the delivery of words themselves

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The declamatory reading displays a great variety of intonation property as regards to the types of written texts. There is almost endless variety in the way writers express themselves; but no matter how pleasurable the way of writing may be, meaning al­ ways comes first.

The declamatory reading

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Before reading aloud appreciate the written text. Firstly, read the passage carefully without worrying over the meaning of a few difficult words. Then, pay close attention to the se­quence of events described, try to realize general meaning, a detailed meaning and be able to define the intentions of the writer and state why you have liked or disliked what you have read.

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In order to appreciate a prose passage it is not enough to un­derstand its meaning: it is necessary to grasp the author's inten­tions and the means he has employed to fulfil them. In a sense good narrative and descriptive prose have much in common with poetry. The writer need not always have an audience in mind. His aim is to tell a story or describe a scene as well as he can.

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A writer helps his characters to come alive not only by de­scribing the way they act but by letting us hear them speak. Thus a continuous prose is interrupted by a dialogue. Effective dialogue enables the reader to feel that he is actually witnessing what is going on. Dialogic texts are author's reproduction of actual conversa­tion and in reading aloud a reader should bear in mind the char­acters of the speakers, their social background and the atmos­phere, the environment, in which the conversation takes place.

The opposition shows that both readings differ totally in any aspect, but primarily in the voice timbre — in the declamatory reading the emotional colouring of the voice is very rich, varied according to the degree of emphasis.

On the prosodic level the markers of the declamatory style reading are: 1. Slow tempo, caused by the lento rate of utterances and prolonged pauses, especially at the passage boundaries. 2. Stable rhythmicality. 3. The use of the falling terminal tones in initial intonation groups, the increase of their range with the emphasis.

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The phonological opposition of the informational and declamatory reading

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