Abstract:

Participation in business negotiations can be viewed as a kind of public speech manipulation. Business negotiations are usually held to reach decisions pertaining to professional matters. The means of achieving professional goals have been the subject of various fields of research. Linguistics studies the tools of speech manipulation at all levels of language including the phonetic one. Today, the sphere of prosodic design of negotiation discourse remains relatively unexplored.

Declarative sentences usually prevail in practically any speech style. This is why this article considers the functional aspect of intonation contours inherent in English declarative sentences. In non-linguistic universities, future businesspeople learn about phonetic aspects of speech within a short timescale and with no natural linguistic setting whatsoever.

The study aims to find effective ways of improving intonation training of future businesspeople. The currently established realistic principle governing the process of mastering of foreign language intonation patterns relies on the idea advocating proximity to normative pronunciation. Training intonation is generally about developing speech activity.

In the present study, we consider professionally oriented methods of teaching intonation in the process of organising pre-planned business negotiations. There is a number of reasons why business negotiations can be considered a productive domain to analyse:
• firstly, this speech register incorporates sense groups encapsulating various extensive sequences;
• secondly, we will be able to define the scope of the sense groups more explicitly;
• thirdly, this speech register is said to be characterised by relatively recurrent intonation contours;
• and finally, this speech situation appears to be especially engaging from the perspective of teaching future businesspeople.

The present study will provide an affirmative answer to a topical question: Is it possible to narrow down intonation of this particular speech register to a limited number of intonation contours? The cases that could not be interpreted based on the typical contours proved inconsiderable in number. All these cases were associated with a more or less vivid emotional colouring that, in a sense, presented a deviation from the general emotional background, which was defined as ‘calm’, ‘categorical’, and ‘self-possessed’.

This paper deploys the following methods of research: comparative analysis, electroacoustic (computer) analysis of verbalised speech, and mathematical-statistical analysis. Using these methods, we will be able to study speech visualisation data and ultimately outline the corresponding methodological principles critical for the training process. Most importantly, we will appeal to businesspeople as a specific professional cluster requiring specific phonetical training compatible with their vocational needs.

Keywords:

Intonation contours, declarative sentence, speech register, business negotiations, sense group.