Speaker-specific prosodic features in conflict discourse

The article touches upon one of the crucial problems of modern communication theory - the determination of the role of prosody in conflict discourse production and its interaction with other linguistic levels. The data provided herein are the results of an electroacoustic analysis of speeches and debates delivered in British Parliament. The material comprises audio records of sessions in the House of Commons dated 2012-2014. The main focus was given to the prosodic means deployed by D. Cameron and H. Harman. The data showed that prosody is capable of reflecting politicians' individual speech styles and, at the same time, it marks the conflict behavior patterns. Moreover, the analysis revealed the most relevant and conflict potential features of utterances and discourse in general: Falling and Stepping heads, Narrow pitch range, Low Falls, Fall-Rises; prevalence of High Falls (narrow range) and/or Fall-Rises; pitch (melody) variations; moderate loudness and lack of contrast between the nuclei and the background. We also noticed the lack of expressive segments in responses to opponent's expressive utterances (dynamic component), varied speech rate within one intonation group; pauses of moderate duration and emphatic pauses; accenting every segment of intonation group; moderate rate of speech accompanied by lowering the pitch level (temporal component).