46 – Lucy Pickering’s new book

It has been many years – very many – since a book has been written about Discourse Intonation, and Lucy Pickering has just published a beautifully clear account of the systems of Discourse Intonation. It will, I’m sure, rapidly become a classic in teacher education.

I am biassed of course. I have been immersed in the Discourse Intonation framework since I first encountered it in the early 1980s, and all of my work has used the transcription system and principles of David Brazil’s work (on which I have a major section on my website here). An additional reason for my bias is that Lucy has given me a very complimentary acknowledgement:

Although I never had the opportunity to meet David, I have been able to “channel” him through Richard Cauldwell …

Jeepers, I didn’t know I had that skill. (Lucy also thanks her pet dogs).

Lucy’s book is in ten short chapters, each of which (apart from the last) usefully ends with sections entitled ‘Check your learning’ and ‘Activities’. While Lucy makes very occasional use of fancy words to prove her academic credentials (‘obfuscate’ and ‘lacunae’ are favourites of mine), the brevity of the chapters, and the clarity of the explanations make this an ideal book for teachers in training on a Master’s course, or other course designed for teachers who already have an initial qualification.

I particularly admire her balancing act of giving explanations of the meanings of intonation, while constantly acknowledging that the choices made by speakers are not rule-bound in the traditional sense (thus not the answer to ‘What is the correct way of saying this sentence?’).

New to me were her Chapters 7 and 8, which concern (respectively) Variation between Traditional and New Varieties of English, and Variation between Traditional Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca. These chapters alone makes the book worth a serious read.

Beautifully clear, easy to understand, excellent decision-making about how much to include, and how much to leave to others to explain. A fantastic publication.

Pickering, L. (2018) Discourse Intonation: A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Teaching the Pronunciation of English. Michigan Teacher Training. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Available here.