Perceptual and acoustic pecularities of advertising slogans (melodic aspect)

The article presents the results of a phonetic experiment on melodic features of public service advertising (PSA). The objective of PSA is to raise awareness, influence and change public attitudes and behavior towards a social issue. Being an integral part of modern society, PSA has its linguistic and extra-linguistic peculiarities. The goal of the investigation was to establish basic tones for an English-speaking public service advertising slogan, test their acoustic measures and describe the role they play in pragmatic function realization. The work is based on the material of 75 English language public service advertising videos. The PSA slogans were selected, manipulated and tested. The perceptual analysis revealed the most productive (high fall, low fall, low rise) and less productive (fall-rise and rise-fall) nuclear tones of advertising slogans. The acoustic measures included: voice fundamental frequency maximal (F0 max), voice fundamental frequency minimal (F0 min), voice fundamental frequency mean (F0) and pitch range (F0 range). The analysis conducted with the help of Praat and Speech Analyzer computer software applications supported these observations. The comparative analysis of the results of the perceptual and acoustic experiments allowed to identify the basic melodic features involved in the implementation of the pragmatic effect of PSA slogans.