A Phonological-Pragmatic Analysis of the Saudi Ministry of Health Official Spokesperson's Speech on COVID-19

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the pragmatic functions of the proclaiming and referring information tones employed in coved-19's speech by the Saudi Ministry of health (MOH) official spokesperson in relation to termination. Moreover, the study examines if the termination component could relate to dominance-non-dominance factors based on Brazil's model [1]. 13 speech excerpts were selected from The Saudi (MOH) spokesperson's speech based on four information criteria chosen for the study. 127 tone units were analyzed acoustically and intonation contours, mean pitch and intensity values were obtained by using praat’s autocorrelation algorithm with a pitch range of 100-500Hz. Results show that the most frequently used tone by the speaker was the (rise) referring+ tone with high pitch value. The dominance factor was higher than the non-dominance factor, which indicates that the speaker was the controller of the discourse as most of his speech carried additive and contrastive information. High termination pitch level correlates with the dominance factor, while high termination intensity level correlates with the non-dominance factor. This study could highlight the importance of intonation as a communicative tool to carry implicit meanings.