Introduction

Spoken discourse not only uses rhythm as a resource, but intonation too. What is intonation? Intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in discourse. It is linguistic, in the sense that it carries meaning; changing the intonation of an utterance can easily change the meaning of that utterance. For instance, the clause

• you understand, don’t you

has one meaning if the tag is accompanied by a falling tone, but a different meaning if it is accompanied by a rising tone. (Say it to yourself, to make sure!) The notion of linguistic can be extended to include the paralinguistic use of intonation, in which something of the mood or attitude of the speaker is conveyed, for instance whether the speaker is angry, bored, insistent, etc. Linguistic might also be extended to include sociolinguistic variation of the kind that shows where a person comes from; for instance, the intonation of working-class Bristolians is quite different from, say, that of middle-class Glaswegians. For practical purposes, in this workbook, we will have to focus on just the one variety, SESP.