0306 – 12 – Positive Intonation About Negative Information

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English - November 02, 2021 00:01 - 6 minutes - 4.24 MB - ★★★★ - 4 ratings
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Previous Episode: 0305 – 11 – Positive Intonation About Positive Information

Next Episode: 0307 – 13 – A Brief Bit on Brackets (or ‘A Pause for a Part on Parentheses’)

2021.11.02 – 0306 – 12 – Positive Intonation About Negative Information

Remember earlier we looked at the fulcrum of facts in a story or sentence? That is, ‘this person says this and that person says that’? Well that can be developed into situations when ‘that person says this happened and that person says it did not’.

In other words, negatives, opposites, contrasts and contradictions. Words such as “didn’t”, “disagreed”, “refused”, “never”, “hadn’t”, “not”, “no” and “none” are usually key words because they point to what the sentence, story or script is about. The same goes for words which have a similar job in a sentence, “should”, “ought”, “may” and so on.

Colouring such words then, highlights an actual (or implied) view which is opposite.

“The moon is not made of green cheese” suggests that someone has just said that it is.

A great place to look for examples of this sentence and intonation construction is in a court room – as what happens in there is very much a case of opposing accounts. “One witness said it was a man in a green hat, another said it was a woman in a red one”.

So if you started a story with “The trial of a police officer accused of murder, has heard claims that he did not set fire to the hostel where seven people died” then it would be natural to highlight the word “not”.

“The officer was asked whether he had a can of fuel with him on the night. ‘I did not’ he replied”.

“The prosecutor said ‘You of all people should know that carrying fuel is disallowed’”

Well, here we have another type of negative in “disallowed”. Unlike “didn’t”, “hadn’t” “couldn’t” in which the negative is a suffix to the main word (did > did not and so on), disallowed (along with its cousins, disorder, disappear, disadvantage, non-essential, non-fiction, unable, unhappy, untidy, unlucky, unusual and so on) has a ‘negative prefix’ to the main word.

Look back at that list and say them to yourself. Don’t you naturally lift or colour the main part of the word rather than its ‘negative prefix’?

“The cat disappeared”, “where is the non-fiction section, please?”, “she was deeply unhappy” and so on.

That’s apart from when we introduce our old friend ‘contrast’ again. If those sentences above were contradicting known or implied information then you would colour the prefix:

“The cat loves playing in the cardboard box. It appeared and then disappeared”, “I can see the fiction shelves, but where is the non-fiction section, please?”, “He was overjoyed, but she was deeply unhappy”.

Talking of negatives, and as I mentioned previously, be careful with the words “can” and can’t” as in some accents they may sound very similar (with my south east England accent I pronounce them ‘can’ and ‘carnt’, but in more northern areas it’s ‘can’ and ‘cant’). “Police say you can’t drive on the new road” – may be open to misinterpretation unless you say “cannot”.

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Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo