Intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when speaking. It is a fundamental part of the way we express our own thoughts and it enables us to understand those of others. It is an aspect of language that we are very sensitive to, but mostly at an unconscious level.
We perceive intonation, understand it and use it without having to examine the intricacies of everything we say or hear. In dealing with intonation in a foreign language, learners need to examine the nature of these unconscious processes, bring them to the surface and show how we believe they work. Learners should on practice rather than theory.
For starters, learners need to understand the choices they make with regard to intonation and how different solutions serve to determine different meanings. As well as helping to determine meaning, intonation gives us clues about the attitude of the speaker, or how they feel about what they are saying. When listening to people speaking, we get clear messages about their attitude from the ways things are said. We can get a good idea, for example, as to whether someone is interested, bored, being kind, being honest or lying, and so on.
The main difficulty for learners with regard to intonation is that its links with specific grammatical constructions or attitudes can only be loosely defined. The reason for analysing these links is that the same words and structures can be given different meanings, or convey a different attitude by altering the intonation. Grammatical and attitudinal analyses of intonation can offer no hard and fast rules, but they can help learners make appropriate choices of intonation.
In linguistics, discourse refers to a unit of language longer than a single sentence. It is important to analyse how intonation relates to the surrounding discourse, rather than specifically to grammar or attitude. Analysing intonation within discourse means that the wider context of a conversation, or monologue, is taken into account, and enables us to see how intonation conveys ideas and information.
Intonation helps us to indicate what is shared knowledge between the speaker and the listener and what is new information. In this approach, intonation patterns are no longer isolated and tied to particular grammar constructions or attitudes, but are related to the context in which they occur.
The advantage of this approach is that it is possible to give clear rules with regard to the appropriate choice of intonation patterns in a given context.