Image courtesy of Tshirt Superstar - Music
Prosody is a linguistic term – wait, don’t stop reading! – concerned with the way we say things. So basically it’s not interested in the actual words we use, but in the way we deliver them. To put it rather more romantically, it’s all about the music of speech – its rhythm (spelled that right first time, well done me), stresses and intonation (called suprasegmentals, fact-fans).
Prosody plays a really important role in communication because it gives us humans information beyond what the words in a sentence literally mean. In case you’re thinking WTF, let’s have a look at it in action.
Imagine someone says this to you:
Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?
Depending on the intonation and rhythm (nailed it again) this person uses, they could be saying that this really is an excellent post about words that’s packed with useful information. Or they might mean that actually it’s incredibly boring, and they wish they’d never come to this godforsaken website. It all depends on the delivery.
As you’ve probably gathered, prosody is particularly important when it comes to picking up on nuance, like if someone’s being sarcastic or not. It can also change the meaning of simple one-syllable utterances like ‘Ah!’ or ‘Ooh!’ to give them loads of entirely different meanings depending on how you say them. Don’t be smutty.
According to Charles Darwin, prosody probably predates the evolution of human language. That’s because even animals use it. For example, monkeys express their feelings using different tones: low ones for anger and impatience, and high ones for fear and pain.
Wow, this is a really great post about words, isn’t it?