Analysis of the temporal discourse organization in the expression of uncertainty in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Prosody, as a structuring element of discourse, fulfills several functions in social interaction (FÓNAGY, 2003). Among them, there is one about expressing the speaker’s intentions regarding the enunciated content. In the case of the expression of uncertainty in different situations of interaction (general knowledge questions, televised games, semi-spontaneous interview), prosody plays a fundamental role. Changes that could happen both in the fundamental frequency and in the intensity and also in the elements that characterize the temporal organization of the speech (related to the duration, or the time of articulation of what is said) give clues to the interlocutor about whether the speaker is sure about what is said (SILVA, 2008; ANTUNES; AUBERGÉ; SASA, 2014). Thus, we intend to describe, in these interaction situations previously mentioned, when the pauses, self-talk and phonemes extension are present, as well as what was the delay time between the end of the question and the beginning of the answer, always comparing answers which the speaker was judged to be sure to answers which he/she was not sure. The speech rate was lower in the expression of uncertainty (which indicates slower speech pace at this attitude), there were pauses, self-talk and phonemes extension only in uncertainty responses, also, the delay time, in case of uncertain expressions, was greater than in cases of certainty. In different discoursive situations, the construction of the enunciative scene can influence the use more or less accentuated of the same prosodic parameters of duration to differentiate the expression of certainty from that of uncertainty.