The analysis of prosodic systems in the classroom discourse of native speaker and nonnative speaker teaching assistants

This dissertation investigates the role of prosodic structure in the classroom discourse of native and nonnative speaker teaching assistants in one American university. Video and audiotaped data of naturally occurring teaching presentations given by male North American, Chinese, and Indian English speakers were collected in the classroom. Fundamental frequency contours and pause structure were calculated using a Kay Elemetrics computerized Speech Laboratory. Patterns of intonation, stress, and pausing were then interpreted using a model of intonation in discourse.; The results of the native speaker analysis show that intonation and pause structure are organized systematically by these speakers both to structure information (for example, to mark topic boundaries and establish contrasts), and interactively to establish a rapport between discourse participants. The results of the two nonnative speaker analyses show that both groups could be characterized by a typical prosodic profile which marked speakers as deviating from a native speaker standard. Typical pitch and pause patterns found in these data show little indication that teachers are directing their presentation towards assisting the students in their comprehension of the material. Conflicts between prosodic cues and organization at other levels of the discourse (for example, topic organization or syntactic structure) make the informational structure of the discourse more difficult to interpret for the native speaker hearer. In addition, intonation choices are shown to contribute to a distancing between teachers and students. At an interpersonal level, they frequently characterize teachers as uninvolved and unsympathetic from the perspective of native speaker participants in the discourse.; The study concludes that prosodic structure forms a natural link between grammatical and soicolinguistic competence and bears a high communicative load in terms of both structuring information and expressing relationships between participants. Therefore, prosodic miscues in nonnative discourse will negatively effect undergraduate perceptions of the nonnative teachers' competence and personality and are one underlying cause of cross-cultural communication failure between International teaching assistants and their students.