Clashing nature of nuclear tones

For a long time intonation was regarded as “pronunciation” of grammar, i.e. intonation was viewed just as a means of uttering certain types of sentences – general question with rising tone, special questions, statements, exclamatory sentences with falling tone, etc. In the late XX century intonation was considered a powerful tool that contributes to the meaning of utterances. Still even current theories restrict the scope of intonation to just five or seven nuclear tones that convey definite attitudes, emotions or feelings. However, in discursive analysis intonation can reveal as many meanings as the number of contexts. Even simple nuclear tones such as low falling or low rising, which are believed to be unemphatic, are able to communicate variety of feelings used in different discourses. Emphatic tones are chiefly observed in ironical, sarcastic, humoristic discourses granting lexis to convey more than dictionary meaning. The research paper observes and illustrates numerous extracts from close-to-real-life situations, i.e. situational comedies and movies, to prove that the attitudes and meanings conveyed by nuclear tones cannot be limited to a certain number. In order to check the validity of observations, samples are included into Praat program which depicts temporal (red line), melodic (blue line) and dynamic (green line) parametres. The assumption is that intonation is capable to create as many meanings as the number of contexts. The article demonstrates cases when the same nucleus expresses a positive attitude in one situation, a negative connotation in another.