Intonational patterns of refusals among egyptian actors and actresses : intonational tendencies among different refusal strategies

Abstract EN

English has been considered the universal language for communication, even between cultures that do not speak English as a native language.

But in order to communicate effectively with other speakers of the language, and to avoid any potential misunderstanding, speakers of any language should be aware of the intonational patterns and their pragmatic implicatures.

Intonation helps the speakers express their emotions and attitudes, draw the attention of the hearers to certain parts of the utterance, indicate the grammatical structure of utterances, and it also can turn a statement into a question without having to change the syntactic structure of the utterance.

Intonation is seen as the music of speech, and a simple change in that music will reflect a certain meaning in the mind of the hearers.

Hence, it is believed that for speakers of English, or any other language, to communicate effectively and avoid any potential misunderstanding, they should be aware of the language's intonational patterns and their implicatures in different contexts.