Melodic characteristics of speech-sounding American lawyers of high social status (electroacoustic analysis of court recordings).

Yakutina Marina V.

The oral forensic discourse of American lawyers in courts of appeal possessing properties characteristic of both formal and spoken speech style, the researcher’s interest has been drawn to phonostylistic analysis of prosodic implementation of the public speech represented by three different social roles participating in a court trial. To prove the statement about the asserted prosodic properties of the oral speech of high rank lawyers we have conducted the electro-acoustic analysis of the authentic audio recordings (duration 85 minutes) carried out with the help of the computer program Speech Analyzer 3.1.0. The key parameter was pitch tracking because it is recognized by many phonologists as the most prominent telling tool for prosodic analysis. The results, which were collected and statistically processed, showed the following patterns: the speech melody is generally characterized by the features of the American variant of English typical for male speakers of the age bracket 45 – 65. However the pitch range is wider then normal in the “applicant” and “defendant” groups and “defendants” show a wider low pitch range than other participants. “Judges” realize their speech mostly in low pitch range which is commonly narrower than that of the other two groups of speakers. According to the research, suggestive and persuasive character of forensic discourse is embodied more in masterful changing of pitch, contrastingly high or low, within the same syntagma, than changing the level of loudness. The oral public speaking of American lawyers not only has special grammar and lexical attributes, well-known by many researchers, but also has their prosodic realization in the most significant parameter – the pitch of voice.

Keywords:forensic, public speech, pitch, prosody, acoustic analysis