Sokyrska O. Sociolinguistic Features of Refusal Utterances' Prosodic Actualization (An Experimental Phonetic Study of English Speech)

This thesis focuses on the study of sociolinguistic properties of prosodic means' functioning and interaction in realizing refusal utterances in English dialogic speech. The dissertation advances the model of the refusal coding and decoding mechanisms, the classifications of refusal tactics realization as well as leading linguistic features of different refusal utterances types, which made it possible to analyze and systematize their functional, structural and sociolinguistic features that determine the specificity of the refusal utterances' prosodic organization.The paper substantiates a scheme of possible reasons that generate specific classes of refusal utterances in the speaker's consciousness. In the course of auditory and acoustic analyses the presented classes helped describe intonation patterns of English refusal utterances attributed to each of these classes. Key words: English refusal utterances, dialogic speech, high, mid and low sociocultural levels, reasons generating refusals, emotional-and-pragmatic potential, prosodic means, auditory and acoustic analyses, invariant and variant intonation patterns.