PhD (candidate of pedagogical sciences), Nechaeva E.S.

Moscow State Pedagogical University, Russia

Compression of Newsreaders’ Speech in

Information Programmes

The article dwells on the phenomenon of the compression of newsreaders’ speech in information programmes. The objective of the present research is to explore available means of temporal compression. Special attention is drawn to the fact that the speech economy characterizes colloquial style of speech, but is considered one of the ways of the changes of the newsreaders’ speech rate.

Key words: speech compression, newsreaders’ speech, speech rate, pausation.

Influence of the digital media on the audience and the problem of effective spoken speech perception is a seriously argued issue. Fast speech of radio and TV may lead to less accurate articulation, thus preventing adequate message perception. The aim of the suggested article is to investigate the phenomenon of speech compression in information programmes in the terms of time deficit and clarify its possible effect on the utterance intelligibility to the audience.

Temporal alterations of a speech signal are possible due to speech rate increase. Speech acceleration is accompanied by involuntary voice modulations: vowel length, pause length, as well as the coarticulation of adjacent sounds. Physiological threshold level while increasing the tempo of speech is rather limited: if the user tries to speak faster, speech rate may increase no more than 30 %. Above mentioned features build the phenomenon of speech compression, which characterizes newsreaders’ speech.

Originally term ‘compression’ derives from the communication (information) theory and refers to the process of encoding digital information using fewer bits.

Speech economy is a peculiarity of the colloquial style and is expressed mostly by means of phonetics (stress reduction, intonation patterns, unstressed vowels reduction, assimilation, accommodation, devoicing and final consonants elision). Speech compression defines all the European languages, and depends on the structural organization of any language. Causes of phonetic changes differ in English and Russian: each case of speech compression (assimilation, conversion, elliptical sentences, etc.) has its own distinctive features.

Newsreaders of Russian and British radio and television often shift to the colloquial style of conveying information and follow the rules of speech economy. This phenomenon may be explained by the attempt to increase speech rate and press the stream of information by means of phonetic compression.

The tempo of newsreaders’ speech has highly increased over the last half century and exceeds the limits of adequate perception. It should be noted that time compression of newsreaders’ speech manifests not by the information density per unit time (that is the alteration of the articulation rate), but by pausation. Speeding up is achieved owing to the reduction of the pause time and number. Linguists are still refining up on when the lack of phonation can be considered a pause. In research works devoted to psycholinguistic analysis of speech, there may be found different definitions: a term “pause” is used if the length of a break of the phonation process exceeds 500 ms (O’Connell & Kowal, 1983), 200 ms (Grosjean & Collins, 1979); 150 ms (Tsao & Weismer, 1997); 130 ms (Dankovičová, 1997); 100 ms (de Pijper & Sandermann, 1994). [1] On the whole, a 150-200 ms pause within a speech signal is regarded considerably reliable length for effective perception.

The objectives of the present research are to measure articulation rate and to explore available means of temporal compression.

The material for the research comprises the BBC World News and Russia 24 information programmes. (There are many reasons for studying broadcast speech, the most obvious of which is availability: broadcast speech is readily accessible and easy to collect.) The bulk of the experimental analysis is constituted by the recorded samples of broadcast discourse produced by television newsreaders. The corpus makes up 27 minutes of recorded speech in English and Russian.

The spoken data have been analyzed auditorily and acoustically (the acoustic analysis was carried out with the support of the computer software SFS/WASP Version 1.54). The primary focus has been made on the following parameters: an average amount of words per minute, a number of stressed words within a speech segment, phonation intervals duration, a number of syllables per second, an average length of a stressed syllable, an average length of an unstressed syllable, frequency of different types of pauses.

The results of the analysis show that news item texts are broken up into large segments of uninterrupted articulation. The average length of the continuous speech of Russian newsreaders is 4 seconds (max – 7 seconds), of British newsreaders – 5 seconds (max – 7 seconds).

Temporal indicators are also of considerable interest. On the one hand, there traced the direct correlation between speech rate and syntagma length. On the other hand, obtained data show, that the speech tempo of the Russian newsreaders is 1.5 times faster than that of the British ones. If Russian speech rate is 429 syllables per minute, the syntagma length is 10.5 syllables, while if British speech rate is 274 syllables per minute, the syntagama length is 6.5 syllables.

The average number of stressed syllables within the uninterrupted segment of speech constitutes 5.4 stressed syllables (BBC World News) and 7.3 stressed syllables (Russia 24). A larger number of accented syllables, in comparison with the colloquial style speech, is connected with the necessity to structure and convey the information adequately.

As for the syllable length, the average rate for the British broadcast is 175 ms, for the Russian broadcast – 130 ms. Shortening of unstressed syllables (mostly due to vowels reduction) should also be noticed.

Research results show some gender differences in juncture pauses usage in Russian newsreaders speech: pauses between syntagmas are more often used by female newsreaders (the average length is 270 ms), however the average pause duration in male newsreaders’ speech is higher (340 ms).

Similar, but less distinctive difference is traced in British newsreaders’ speech (an average pause length between syntagmas in female newsreaders’ speech is 215 ms). (This research findings correlate to the studies of newsreaders’ speech results [Hannisdal, 2006; Laver, 1994; Levelt, 1995; Zhemerova, 2009, etc]).

The study has revealed that the alteration in the duration and number of pauses is one of the main means of newsreaders’ speech compression both in British and Russian information programmes, which is explained by rigid timeframe of TV and radio networks. The length reduction of unstressed syllables due to vowel reduction can also be mentioned here as some additional option.

It should be noted that phonetic compression is a peculiar feature of the colloquial style, and use of compressed forms in newsreaders’ speech may prevent effective perception of information (Evans, 1977; Foulke & Thomas, 1969; Janse, 2004; Janse & Ernestus, 2011; Nadeina, 2004, etc.). Thus newsreaders’ speech rate increase in terms of speech economy should be accompanied by clear and distinct articulation.

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