n="justify"> rather than Bring the book . The two phrases are likely to leave quite a different impression on one and the same hearer, the former perceived naturally as a request to bring the book, the latter a command. Phrase # 1 serves a good start for a probably successful minidialogue. Phrase # 2 can make a native speaker doubt the interlocutor s intentions and make him or her think of the speaker as a rude person., We can say that speaking politely means saying sentences of the kind Could you ...? , Can you ...? and so on. However, once we recall such an enormously important speech feature as intonation we could be struck how significantly it may change our view of politeness. Just pronounce the same sentence Can you bring the book for me? with different intonation imagining that you are irritated or annoyed by your interlocutor who won t bring you the book though he had promised to. If you try this difference when speaking to people, the effect is sure to be different. Intonation is surprisingly powerful in making a conversation either a failure or success. Will you please sit down can be pronounced with a lot of variations of voice tone, timbre, loudness, accentuation and tempo and at the same time the speaker will have a certain intention which is going to be reflected in these changes of the intonation of the whole phrase.is first to be perceived by ear, rather than the verbal component of an utterance. So any utterance or just sentence has intonation because even if it is not pronounced it is meant to either out loud or in the inner speech. Intonation is a complex phenomenon consisting of pitch, or speech melody, intensity, or loudness, tempo, or rate of speech, sentence stress, or accentuation, and rhythm (though different linguists distinguish different number and quality of the components). It is not only melodic characteristics that can make an utterance polite or impolite. For example, if in reply to my having given her what she had asked for, my friend will say Thank you rather quickly and quickly as well will leave me, I wouldn t consider such Thank you polite. There are general rules of speaking politely that must exist in various cultures. They include speaking not very loudly (using moderate intensity); speaking not very fast; speaking with a certain melody (eg using not very high tone); speaking with not very high emotion but in a more or less reserved way; not using gruff and rude gesture...
