PROSODIC MARKERS IN THE EXPRESSION OF JOY. ANALYSIS OF SPEECH ACTS IN SPONTANEOUS SAMPLES FROM SANTA CLARA CITY

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a descriptive analysis of the behavior of prosodic features of intonation in speech acts with expressive value of joy in spontaneous samples from Santa Clara city, in Cuba. The objective was to identify the prosodic features that are stably associated with the expression of this modal value and its semantic features. For this purpose, phonopragmatic analysis was used, which allows analyzing the correlations between prosodic variables and the illocutionary and modal meanings of speech acts. In the analyzed sample, a total of 81 speech acts with expressive modal value of joy were found; of these, 49 acts are representative (60.49%), 25 are directive (30.86%) and 7 acts are expressive (8.64%). The analyzed data allowed us to infer among the fundamental prosodic features, the use of varied tonemes, the presence of tonal peaks located in the highest tonal levels of the speakers' register; intensity peaks that exceed the general average (75.47db) and more frequent vowel lengthening at the beginning and at the end of the speech acts, for a predominance of positive correlation of the three analyzed indicators (+tone+intensity+time).