Phonostylistique des annonceurs de la radio: Etude prosodique de textes radiophoniques

Abstract

En dehors des lexiques spécialisés et des structures syntaxiques spécifiques, c'est la prosodie qui fait que tous reconnaissent sans hésitation les textes radiophoniques. Ceux-ci se distinguent clairement du parler spontané et, dans une certaine mesure, d'autres formes de l'écrit oralisé: l'accentuation barytonique, des patrons rythmico-mélodiques spécifiques et une prosodie qui assume un rôle particulier dans l'organisation de la phrase seraient tous motivés par un désir de la part de l'annonceur de faire apparaître une qualité professionnelle.Après un bref survol des descriptions du style oral des présentateurs faites par d'autres chercheurs, nous proposons ici de faire une analyse qualitative et quantitative de nos propres données recueillies en 1994 auprès des annonceurs de Radio France Internationale, dans le but de confirmer, modifier ou réfuter quelques-unes des hypothèses proposées auparavant. Enfin, nous mettrons en lumière quelques aspects de la prosodie des annonceurs de radio qui restent à étudier de plus près.

A Diachronic Study of Initial Stress and other Prosodic Features in the French News Announcer Style: Corpus-based Measurements and Perceptual Experiments

“…Such contexts are considered in studies through laboratory corpora on word-initial stress in French (Di Cristo, 1999a, 1999bJun & Fougeron, 2000, 2002Welby, 2006;Astésano et al, 2007). From the study of a 10-minute corpus of non-laboratory speech, Astésano (2001) measured pitch rise and onset lengthening as acoustic correlates of initial stress and additionally nucleus lengthening as indications of emphatic initial stress.…”

“…It would date back to the late 19th century and even earlier (Di Cristo, 1999a), even though its origin is difficult to trace precisely. Consequently, recent accounts of French prosody have integrated the coexistence of primary (final) and secondary (initial) stresses into phonological models (Di Cristo, 1999a;Lacheret-Dujour & Beaugendre, 1999;Rossi, 1999;Jun & Fougeron, 2000, 2002Post, 2000;Welby, 2006;Astésano, Bard, & Turk, 2007). They hypothesize a double marking of content words or phrases by an initial stress and a final stress, the former being essentially melodic (but also associated with onset lengthening) and the latter characterized by lengthening -as well as pitch rise when it is not utterance-final (Rossi, 1999;Astésano, 2001).…”

“…Initial stress descriptions in the literature were essentially made through analyses of laboratory corpora (Jun & Fougeron, 2000, 2002Welby, 2006;Astésano et al, 2007), sometimes under strong constraints upon the voiced nature of all speech segments (Welby, 2006) and always were done by hand-labeling. The study of diachronic variation requires the use of a large amount of data, namely archives which cannot be built up to fit specific requirements such as having continuously voiced segments.…”

“…To our knowledge, few publications are devoted to the diachronic evolution of prosody, even though phonetic changes and their perception are of particular interest for phonostylistics and linguistics (Léon, 1993). Scholars rather examine the diaphasic dimension of prosodic variation across speaking styles (Fónagy & Fónagy, 1976; Fónagy, 1989; Vihanta, 1991, 1993; Léon, 1993; Astésano, 1998, 2001; Oakes, 2002; Goldman, Auchlin, Simon, & Avanzi, 2007). In particular, a tendency toward “barytonic” (or initial) stress has been observed in radio/television journalists, which would make their “jerky” speaking style recognizable even in filtered speech (Fónagy & Fónagy, 1976).…”

“…On the one hand, an emphatic way of speaking – influenced by reading and therefore writing – is typical of old recordings (Méadel, 1994), suggesting a Decrease Hypothesis: word-initial stress loses ground. On the other hand, as a marker of professional identity, initial stress contributes to portraying today’s journalists and political figures by contrast to casual speech (e.g., Fónagy & Fónagy, 1976; Oakes, 2002), suggesting an Increase Hypothesis: word-initial stress gains ground. Our goal is to verify if a stylistic change is in progress (with an increasing or decreasing tendency to initial stress or other features) and to exhibit relevant pronunciation traits discriminating broadcast news speaking styles.…”