Tempo variation in regional speech (based on northern and southern English dialects)

Abstract

The article examines the variability of tempo in English unprepared dialect speech. The work aims to identify regionally specific tempo modulations in the monologues of eight speakers from the northern and southern parts of England. The scientific novelty of the study resides in the authors’ assessment of the prosodic manifestation of the historical linguistic divide between the two regions of England, which was previously described solely at the level of segments. This research focuses on the acoustic properties of phonation and pausing in the speech samples and pays particular attention to the variability of syllable and sense-group duration, with a special regard to the sociolinguistic and gender factors. The results of the auditory and acoustic analyses applied in the work made it possible to identify tempo attributes, specific to the communicative behavior of the northern and southern residents of England and reflecting their cultural identity at the prosodic level. The main tempo modulations that distinguish the participants’ speech patterns include the degree of rhythmicity and the length of phonation periods in speaking, as well as the frequency of pauses.