6.

Methodology

To carry out the analysis of data in terms of prosodic markers, it is necessary:

1) to make a selection of text passages favorable to the research objectives;

2) to situate the action of the narrative in the context of the story because the contexts are
important to define the characters' attitudes;

3) to highlight where and how are the prosodic markers;

4) to define the author's strategies using prosodic markers to describe the characters
involved, giving the narrative a style closer to what a real conversation would be in
dialogues.

The last two considerations and analyzes are left for the end. The first three are presented
below.

Abbreviations used in
the following
examples.

The interpretive analyzes follow the models of tone, intonation, and pitch predicted by
Halliday (1970), with special importance for compound primary tones and secondary tones,
both more closely related to the speaker's attitudes, therefore, with greater interpretative
weight in a literary narrative.

The data was collected from the dialogues of the first six parts of the first chapter. This
choice was due to the high incidence of dicendi verbs, simpler and more complex markings
of speaker attitudes, and diversity of speech, with only two characters appearing in more
than one chapter, that is, the variety of voices was taken into account.

The division between what would be considered a lexical prosodic marker and what would
not be considered for the analysis was a choice made regarding scope and form. Scope,
because the description of characters was the initial interest, not the narrator's speech since
he would be the voice responsible for characterizing himself. Because it is not a play with
explicit rubrics, it was considered as interesting the description of the characters by the voice
of the narrator. Formal due to choosing what would actually be a marker that refers to the
character's speech: some characterizations precede the chapter's dialogue by many
paragraphs and some characterizations are presented later in the text, which cannot be
applied to what was said. In the cases mentioned, these descriptions were observed as a
feature of the general description of the character, and not of his speech. We considered
lexical prosodic markers the occurrences that are very close to the speech and refer directly
to it in some way. Punctuation was also considered a feature of separating the scope of
prosodic markup. Ex:

The receptionist said, “Good weather. Thinking about it now, I believe

it is the dry season.” He added casually, “I don't care about the
outside. The last time I visited was three years ago. You see once,
you know all there is to know. Here's your ticket. Special elevator
right behind. It is signaled 'Tower'. Just enter it.” (Asimov, p. 14)

Although the speeches are presented together, we consider this paragraph as two distinct
entries for the quantitative analysis. It was segmented as follows:

First entry: The receptionist said, “Good weather. Thinking about it now, I believe it is the dry
season.”

Second entry: He added casually, “I don't care about the outside. The last time I visited was
three years ago. You see once, you know all there is to know. Here's your ticket. Special
elevator right behind. It is signaled 'Tower'. Just enter it.”

This happened because we considered “The receptionist said” to have scope over “Good
weather. Thinking about it now, I believe we are in the dry season.” And “He added, casually”
has scope over “I don't care about the outside. The last time I visited was three years ago.
You see once, you know all there is to know. Here's your ticket. Special elevator right behind.
It is signaled 'Tower'. Just enter it.” The second entry has several periods, but the division of
conversational turns places them in the same speech.

This division had to happen several times in the accounting of entries; after several attempts
to separate them, this result was the most productive and coherent. Productive because it
allowed segmenting all the lines according to the same criteria and coherent because it
worked according to the scope of the characterization.

Each of the entries was annotated according to the character, the presence or absence of
lexical prosodic markers, their position, and their complexity. In the speech we used as an
example, this annotation is: The receptionist said, “Good weather. Thinking about it now, I
believe it is the dry season.”
 Character: receptionist

Presence of verb dicendi: yes

Nature: dicendi par excellence

Location: before the speech

Presence of speaker attitude markers: no

He added casually, “I don't care about the outside. The last time I visited was three years
ago. You see once, you know all there is to know. Here's your ticket. Special elevator right
behind. It is signaled 'Tower'. Just enter it.”

Character: receptionist

Presence of dicendi verb: yes

Nature: verb transformed into dicendi

Location: before the speech

Presence of speaker attitude markers: yes

Nature: adverb

Location: before the speech

Regarding the form and arrangement of prosodic markers in the dialogue, there are
considerations about the vertical position of these characterizations, that is, in which lines
they appear throughout the entire dialogue, not only concerning the speech of the character
they refer to. Using the same entries as an example, in both examples there are dicendi
verbs, but only the second one has a marker of the speaker's attitude. This division proved
to be relevant to delimit what we previously called the dialog layout by showing in which
parts (initial, medial, or final) these markings are concentrated.

The phonetic aspects are considered according to, firstly, the punctuation of each period, so
it is possible to determine a probable primary tone. After that, it is evaluated if the speech in
question demands a compound tone. Simple and compound primary tones were already
characterized, and the parameters used for their application are those recommended by
Halliday (1970).
The focus of “A course in spoken English” is training to recognize the possible tones of the
English language. As there is an interpretive bias in the analysis, these tones were applied
to the utterances according to what seemed reasonable and coherent for each line. Halliday
describes that certain patterns of intonation are used by speakers unless there is a good
reason against it (1970, p. 3), then the author asks the reader to keep this in mind for the
study of tones and their combinations. This observation was taken as a maxim for the
methodology presented. During the analyses, there was a process (of eliminating the
combination of primary and secondary tones, as well as possible changes) that is not
presented in the final work. The awareness that the less marked and even simpler possibility
for data interpretation is maintained throughout the work. Indications of changes were only
made if there was a good reason for them to occur, and this choice is made in the
expectation of respecting the more natural intonation contours of the English language.

The work “A course in spoken English” offers extensive training for the correct production of
tones and their consequent recognition. This training was carried out before the dissertation
started and fortified during the analysis. One of the difficulties of adopting Halliday's theory is
the amount of training necessary to be able to determine the tones used in sentences with
certain syntactic structures and certain speaker attitudes. On the other hand, an advantage
is the existence of the adaptation of the tones to Brazilian Portuguese carried out by Cagliari
(1982, 1992), a model that was also used to improve the comprehension of tones and their
connections with emotions.

The application of Halliday's theory is carried out after the formal and contextual analysis of
the inputs. The first step is to establish the type of sentence of which the speech is
composed, which is marked by the punctuation provided by the narrator. This observation is
what indicates the primary tone of the character's speech. The second step is the verification
of the existence of compound tones, and what they would be. Again, the score is the biggest
indicator of this possibility. The third step is to take into account the speaker's attitude
indicated by the narrator, whether it is located before or after the speech. This step is what
results in the assignment of subtones or changes in pitch and rhythm. Finally, possibilities of
altering the semantic focus are observed, according, again, to the speaker's attitude, and
any other clues of the speaker's attitude that the narrator has not directly attributed to the
character. In the latter case, the third step is performed again until the possibilities of
interpretation are excluded. Using the same example seen so far in the methodology
section:

The receptionist said, “Good weather. Thinking now, I believe it is the dry season.”
 Step 1: The first period is performed as tone 1 (affirmative)

The second period is also performed with tone 1 (affirmative)

Step 2: The part that precedes the comma in the second period is performed with the lowest
range, as it is a consideration secondary to the main topic of conversation.

Step 3: There is no explicit speaker attitude marking. It is possible to determine that the
receptionist has a casual attitude towards the interaction, so he will not be overly assertive or
authoritative, keeping a normal and conversational pitch, without major changes of pace as
well.

The expected results of the analysis carried out in this way are dialogues with other areas of
Linguistics and Literature since lexical prosodic markers can present significant information
for interpretations and analysis of different natures.