Prosodic features of public speech in Chinese political discourse

Abstract

The article addresses the prosodic features of Chinese political speech, conducting an in-depth analysis through the lens of existing research by Ukrainian and Chinese linguists. The scientists emphasize the pivotal role of prosodic characteristics of political speech in shaping the audience’s perception of the speech text within the realm of political discourse. The study delves into the concept of political discourse in modern linguistics, dissecting its features and associated political rhetoric. It emphasizes the vital role of prosody and its pragmatic influence in political communication, substantiating the importance of employing prosodic means in the construction of political speech to outline the dominants of the text content and emotional impact on the listener. The author determines prosody as a crucial component of political discourse and finds out that Chinese political speech is characterized by a pronounced logical and phrasal accentuation, slower speaker’s speech rate, and longer pauses before and after semantically significant words and phrases that are of important semantic significance for the entire speech. Notably, the research findings demonstrate that the speaker changes the rhythm of the statement in order to overcome monotony and draw attention to the significant parts of the speech. Illustrating these findings with examples from the speech delivered
by Chinese President Xi Jinping in October 2022 to representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, the study shows how the rhythmical adjustments in the speaker’s statement effectively mitigate monotony. The author determines the specifics of the implementation of Chinese-language political discourse through the mechanism of prosody and concludes that the effectiveness of public speech depends on its sound patterns, demonstrating their capacity to enhance imagery and expressiveness of speech.