CC BY
36
RUSSIAN LAW JOURNAL Volume XI (2023) Issue 5
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF INFLUENTIAL MONOLOGUES: AN EXPLORATION OF PROMINENT STYLISTIC FEATURES IN ENGLISH TED
TALKS
MARIA SALAHUDDIN,
M.Phil Scholar Riphah International University Faisalabad DR. MAIMOONAABDULAZIZ, Assistant Professor Department of English, National University of Modern Languages Faisalabad Campus UZMAQADIR M.Phil Scholar Riphah International University Faisalabad FAREEHAMASTOOR M.Phil Scholar Riphah International University Faisalabad
Abstract-Today, public speaking is considered one of the most powerful and influential forms of communication to motivate change, influence decisions and boost creativity. TED Talk is one of the influential public speaking forums that encourage the audience to think innovatively and focus on the achievement of their set goals. The starting point of the present research is the notion that TED Talks stand unique among other genres in terms of their prominent stylistic features. Thus, stylistic patterns and their communicative functions in influential English TED Talks were investigated in addition to linguistic choices to highlight significant lexical features, phonological variations, semantic representations, and discourse style in this spoken genre. The triangulation research method was employed to quantify the results of the Influential English TED Talks Corpus (IETTC) containing transcribed files of 2000 talks to interpret it qualitatively. The analysis of prominent stylistic features showed that TED speakers employ particular linguistic choices during digital content creation on public speaking platforms to persuade the audience. TED Talks enjoys a semiformal form of spoken communication that contains formal and colloquial lexis, content and functional words, jargon, slang and so forth. This genre has a particular discourse style for being interactive, involved, persuasive and non-narrative. Talks are also adorned with similes and metaphors. The findings seem fair to conclude TED Talks as a distinct genre of public speaking. This research can further be extended to explore the morpho-syntactic schemes of TED Talks or to explore the features of undiscovered spoken genres.
Keywords: Stylistic Features, TED Talks, Genre Analysis, Public Speaking, Parts of Speech Tagging
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays in the era of globalisation, the English language has gained attention as a universal language to bring people of different nationalities closer. Public speaking in the English language has become a strong medium of communication and an extremely powerful way to influence decisions and motivate creativity. Good oratory skills enable the speakers to share their ideas and disseminate knowledge to the audience in an effective manner. In Mehrabian's point of view, body language (55%), voices (38%) and words (7%) are three important elements of public speaking. Though words' contribution to public speaking exerts marginal impacts, they still serve as a repository of a speaker's ideas and philosophies. Thus, the knowledge of how public speeches are
structured through specific linguistic choices can help the listeners to develop such effective public speaking skills
Research Background
TED Talks are one of the most pervasive and influential public speaking forums to influence the audience's mind. This speech event has a mission to disseminate knowledge and spread ideas to bring changes in lives, attitudes and particularly, the world. The speakers (native or non-native) of the English language present their ideas in the form of a story-telling presentation that is available in 38 languages and subtitles. This public speaking platform has its unique style to influence audience attitudes and opinions.
According to Caliendo (2014), Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Talks involve different genre types e.g. newspaper articles, television science programs, university lectures and various semiotic modes (audio, video, written and spoken). The main communicative purpose of TED Talks is to encourage those who need inspiration and optimistic suggestions as well as to motivate the audience to think differently and creatively. To achieve this task, a speaker employs storytelling techniques to influence not only the live audience but also online viewers of ted.com's official website.
Public speaking has always been considered an opportunity to inspire ideas, motivate change, and influence the mentality of the audience. It is explored in terms of evaluating speaking style and prosodic variation in an 8-hour 9-style corpus study (Goldman et al., 2014), to identify key language forms in soliloquies in Shakespeare's plays (Murphy, 2015), to determine stylistic variation in the dialogue corpus of television series for natural language generation (Grace & Marilyn, 2017), to explore the stylistic characteristics of audio-based podcasts through computational analysis (Martikainen, 2020), to analyse stylistic features in Donald Trump's speech (Rong, 2021) and to study stylistic devices and expressive means in TED Talks lectures on architecture and construction (Konovalova&Nizamieva, 2020).
TED Talks as a public speaking genre, in particular, has also been investigated. This speech event is explored in terms of analysing linguistic features and rhetorical move structure in the introduction (Khajornphaiboon, 2019), to identify the frequency of macro discourse markers (Uicheng, 2018), to investigate gender difference in hedging words (Li, 2020), to explore translation strategies (Dzhabrailova, 2019), to study the patterns of clusivity and modality (Carlo, 2018) and to critically analyse its discourse through parts of speech (Ulfah, 2020).
The present research investigates the stylistic features and linguistic choices employed by TED Talk speakers to persuade listeners to think innovatively about new ideas. The knowledge of prominent stylistic features of this influential public speaking platform is helpful for researchers to spot trends in this spoken genre and encourage academics to know how language can be used to enhance confidence levels and to motivate others to think creatively.
problem statement
Limited research work has been conducted to explore the stylistic features of this popular webmediated genre of public speaking. The present research not only explores the existing features of the spoken genres but also discovers new features as well. The present study has also investigated which linguistic choices and stylistic features have contributed to make TED Talks a popular public speaking genre.
purpose
The present research proposed to explore and evaluate prominent features of this spoken genre that are yet to be explored. This corpus-based study investigated vocabulary choices, lexico-grammatical features, phonological variations, semantic representations, and discourse patterns. Hence, the aim of the present research was the exploration of prominent stylistic features and observance of the functions of linguistic features in influential English TED Talks.
Research Objectives
This research adheres to achieve the following objectives:
1. To compile the corpus, containing transcripts of influential English TED Talks
2. To evaluate and interpret the most significant stylistic features of public speaking as a genre
3. To explore intra-genre variation exists in English TED Talks
Research Questions
The present research focuses on finding the answers to the following research questions. 1. What are the significant stylistic features of influential English TED Talks?
a. Which features are frequently used at the phonological level?
b. Which linguistic features are prominent at the lexico-semantic level?
c. Where does the discourse of this public speaking genre stand in terms of functional dimensions? Research Significance And Scope
The present study allows us to explore spoken varieties in influential English TED Talks from different perspectives by analysing their stylistic features. It will also help future researchers to spot trends in the TED Talk genre and compare it with already discovered spoken genres to explore new features. Academics can consider this research to understand how language can be used to persuade others to think differently.By analysing the stylistic features of TED Talks, this dissertation allows the students and academics to understand the characteristics of TED Talks and provide a reference for future work. This research will provide a new dimension to already available research in spoken genres. It is investigated whether the TED Talks genre stands similar or varies linguistically in comparison with already discovered spoken genres or not.
Research Limitation and Delimitation
In terms of limitation, this study is narrowed down to the investigation of stylistic features and functional implications of linguistic elements of influential English TED Talks only so its results cannot be applied to other spoken genres such as YouTube, interviews, speeches, podcasts and vodcasts.This study is delimited to influential TED Talks content created in English, which has a viewership of millions and is available at ted.com. Furthermore, morpho-syntactic and pragmatic levels were not explored due to time constraints.
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The current research work deals with the popular web-mediated genre of influential English TED Talks. A Corpus of transcribed TED Talks, the Influential English TED Talks Corpus (IETTC), was collected from ted.com official website, sifted, and converted into .txt format to make it compatible with tools of data analysis and to obtain quantitative results. The results obtained from the software were further evaluated qualitatively. Multidimensional Analysis Tagger, version 2.0.5 (Nini, 2019) was used to tag the TED Talks corpus to assign parts of speech. Windows 3.5.9 version (Anthony, 2020) of AntConc helped to explore the frequency of stylistic features. Multidimensional Analysis Tagger by Andrea Nini (2019) simplified the functional analysis of English TED Talks texts and helped to explore its discourse patterns. The phonological features of TED Talks were observed through PRAAT (v.6310).
This research employed a triangulation approach. The frequency of the most frequent stylistic and linguistic features was quantified to interpret results qualitatively. The present research employed a random stratified sampling method, a type of probability sampling, to choose influential English TED Talks on the basis of viewership for analysis. This sampling method is suitable to represent a non-equal sample.Only influential English TED Talks based on viewership in millions were shortlisted in the present research to evaluate the style of this spoken genre.
Table 2.1: Distribution of Selected TED Talks
Sr. No Number of Talks Number of Tokens
1 2000 3,431,928
The established criteria for the sample (TED Talks) collection of the top 2000 TED Talks was based on the number of views in millions.
3. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Significant Phonological Features of TED Talks
Spoken language is made up of distinct phonemes that are strung together to convey different shades of meaning. Speech analysis involves the study of segmental (alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, sound symbolism etc.) and suprasegmental (tone, pitch, stress, tempo etc.) features. This section of analysis offers insights and details of the following research question: (a) Which features are frequently used at the phonological level?
Alliteration
This device of phonostylistics refers to the repetition of consonants at the beginning of words. The same effect is often employed in children's rhymes to make memorization easier and in advertising so the slogan sticks to the viewer's mind. TED speakers also use this artistic and aesthetic quality by repetition of sounds to make the audience more involved in their speech. The flow of music gives the speech an emphatic and emotive sensation.
"New recruits were forced to swear an oath "to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword," and to obey their master's will without question"
This excerpt from TED Talks contains 3 instances of two-word alliteration. The speaker has repeated the two-word group 'to be' at-least four times with stress on the content given in the quotation marks. All three examples of alliteration have a vowel after a consonant giving a lyrical feeling as in consonance. 'To be burned' and 'to be bound' have a rhyming pattern. 'P' and 'b' are plosive consonants so the above example can be called plosive alliteration. Look at another example:
"Sea-salt mist from seawater sprayed from ships" Here, the consonant 's' is used almost five times in the sequence. In the first three under-line examples of alliteration, a vowel is preceding the consonant while in later examples, this pattern is missing. Sea /si:/, salt /so:lt/, seawater /si:'wo:t8(r)/, sprayed /sprei/ and ships /fip/, this repetition of the /s/ sound in the above example is called sibilance alliteration. 'S' in sea-salt is an example of internal alliteration.
And it's the nationalism of an idea that essentially says you can endure differences of caste, creed, color, culture, cuisine, custom and costume, consonant, for that matter, and still rally around a consensus.
These lines contain the consonant 'c' having a hard /k/ sound. Cast /ka:st/, color /kAl.8r/, culture /kAltJ8(r)/, cuisine /kwizi:n/, costume /kDs.tju:m/ and consonant /kDn.s8.n8nt/ contains vowel after hard /k/ sound represent the consonance example along with alliteration while only 'creed' is the one in which two consonants occur together at initial positions. The repetition of the 'c' sound in hard form constitutes guttural alliteration. Hard /g/ g/sound as in 'global greenhouse gases' also falls in this category. Thus, words with underlined consonants are good examples of alliteration in the spoken genre. Onomatopoeia
The words which have aural similarity with the actual natural sounds, they fall in the category of onomatopoeia. This device has its own stylistic effect as it makes the storytelling interesting and
more lively. Onomatopoeic words are used when it becomes difficult to communicate the sense of a sound in imagery. Here are some frequently used onomatopoeic expressions in TED Talks.
Table 3.1:Frequency distribution of most frequent Onomatopoeic words in TED Talks
Sr. No Onomatopoeia Examples
Meaning
Frequency
1 2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Click
Ring
Boom
Knock
Tick-tock
Snap
Bump
Buzz
Beep
Whoop
Short clicking sound Sound of a bell ringing Loud sound Hit something Sound of clock
A sudden sharp cracking noise
125 112 60 25 25 24
The sound produced when two heavy 19 objects hit each other
Low humming sound 18
A high-pitched sound of a device or 12
horn for a warning or signal
Loud cry in excitement or joy 8
The table shows that many onomatopoeic expressions are used by TED speakers to convey the senses of different sounds. These expressions can be classified on the following basis. o Animals Sound: TED speakers have deliberately used animal sounds such as roar (6), oink (3), bark
(5), quack (4), meow (2), purr (2), screech (2) and more. o Mechanical Sounds: Sounds like tick-tock (25), beep (12), click (125), buzz (18), clang (1), and
boing (4) fall under this category. o Vocal Sounds: These include toot (1), groan (2), murmur (1), achoo (1), brrrr (1) and belch (1) etc. o Natural Sounds: Splash (4), rustle (5), whoosh (5), and zap (1) are sounds nature makes. o Impact Sounds: They are produced when a thing hits something else such as bam (10), thump (4), splat (4) etc.
Stress, Intonation, Intensity
There are varied sound modulations involved to determine prosodic features or suprasegmental phonology e.g. force (stress, loudness, emphasis), tone (pitch, tune) and temporal modulation. Stress refers to the prominence given to one syllable of a word in a longer utterance (force or intensity) while intonation is the rise and fall of the pitch during a connected speech. On the other hand, voice intensity (loudness) is an auditory sensation through which a sound is ordered from soft to loud. Acoustic cues e.g. intonation and intensity are considered emotional prosody or vocal emotion.
- modifiable Te.vtGnd
I'm going to show you
Figure 3.1:Distribution of prosodic features in the phrase extracted from Female speaker talk
The above image has been taken out from PRAAT (v.6.3.10) and is showing a female utterance of the phrase "I'm going to show you" with varied prosodic patterns. This phrase has been used 126 times in the total TED corpus. First of all, the female speaker has used the contracted form or elision "I'm" which is characteristic of spoken communication. Secondly, all the words in this phrase are mono-syllabic except 'go-ing', which is a di-syllabic word. When it comes to the stress of this di-syllabic word, the duration of the second syllable 'ing' is greater than the first syllable 'go'. Likewise, more stress is given to 'ing' in comparison with the first syllable (go,ing'). In mono-syllabic words, more emphasis is given to the word 'show' for emphasis while long sounds can also be observed at the boundaries at the juncture of two vowels in 'going' and 'you'.
The intonation patterns are also prominent as the image with the highest pitch is 384.1 hertz in the middle of 'going' while the lowest is 227.4 hertz in the middle of 'you'. Females tend to have a pitch range between 160-300 hertz but here the highest value falls above the limit which may be due to stage performance before a live audience. Sound intensity (loudness) of the female voice also varied from start to end with the lowest being 52.2 dB in the middle of 'going' and 'to' whi le the higher was 78.71 dB. The results show that speakers' intensity and intonation both drop while uttering the preposition 'to' and are considerably higher at the juncture of two vowels (going +you).
Figure 3.2:Distribution of prosodic features in the statement extracted from male speaker talk
Here is another image extracted from PRAAT (v.6.3.10) that shows the stress, pitch and intensity results of the male presenter's voice. Again, the contraction form is used in the beginning (I'm) with only one di-syllabic word 'going' is there. The stress patterns of the male presenter's voice indicate that more emphasis is given to uttering the preposition 'to' than others. Additionally, the stress scheme of the word 'going' shows that though the voice is louder while uttering the first syllable, the second syllable is still stressed in comparison with the first one that is unstressed. The highest intonation is 204.04 hertz at the end of the preposition 'to' while the lowest is 126.9 hertz at the beginning. Man pitch almost varies from 60-180 hertz and the reason for this variation in the current may be the stage performance in front of a huge audience. The highest and lowest intensity values also vary between 65.5db which is soft to 80.57db loud.
The comparison of male and female presenter voices shows that they have varied stress patterns. The female presenter stressed on all words while the male presenter stressed only on one word (to). Likewise, it is generally considered that female pitch tends to be higher than males and the same thing is shown in the results. The female presenter's voice is quite soft in comparison with the male presenter's voice.
Figure 3.3:Intonation and intensity patterns in the phrase extracted from female/male (left to
right) speaker talk
The left side figure presents the intonation and intensity patterns of female TED speakers. The varied rise and fall of intonation at different word levels are quite visible. The pitch is lower at the beginning of 'I'm' and rises at 'going'. It again falls at 'to' and little rises while uttering 'show' and finally lower down again at 'you'. The voice intensity is higher at 'I'm', falls while uttering 'to' means a soft tone and again rises at 'show' which indicates a loud condition. The right side figure of the male presenter's voice shows the low intonation at the start, which gradually increases in the middle, and again falls at the end of the phrase. The intonation is higher at the juncture of 'to' and 'show'. Contrary to this, the voice intensity is lowering down while uttering the preposition 'to' which is almost similar to female presenter intensity at this level means a soft tone. However, the difference lies in the intonation where the female presenter's voice is lowering while uttering 'to' but the man's pitch is raised at this level. The pitch of both male and female speakers is lower while performing pronouns 'I' and 'you'. Sometimes, speakers also use statements as questions that can be observed by following rising and falling intonation patterns.
Figure 3.4: Depiction of increasing tone in the statement-based question of Female speaker
Here is another image presenting a female speaker uttering 'Wow! You're from Mongolia?'. It is evident from the display that all words 'wow', 'you', 're' and 'from' are monosyllabic words except 'Mongolia' which is a tri-syllabic word (Mon-go-lia). The female presenter has emphasised more on uttering 'from' and the third syllable of Mongolia. The exclamatory expression 'wow' is also stressed. The speaker has also taken a pause (tempo) after uttering the exclamatory expression. Another noticeable thing is that the speaker has omitted 'r' at the boundary of 'you' and 'from' and uttered '[ju;f8m]', which is an example of assimilation, a segmental feature. Likewise, the letter 'm' is repeated in between 'from' and 'Mongolia' which is why the assimilation is visible here as the speaker uttered 'fo-mongolia' and skipped one /m/. Another significant thing is that the statement 'you're from Mongolia' is used as a question that is evident from the rising intonation at the end of the third syllable of 'Mongolia'.
When it comes to pitch patterns of the statement, the highest pitch is observed at 357 hertz at the end due to emphasis with a lower pitch remaining 150.4 hertz. The intonation is getting higher from the beginning till the centre of 'from' and the first syllable of Mongolia. It gets higher at the end to emphasise the question. Meanwhile, the minimum intensity of the female voice is 33.4 dB which may be of pause while the maximum is 83.6 dB. Voice intensity is higher at the beginning of 'wow' as it is associated with emotions.
Figure 3.7:Depiction of increasing tone in the statement-based question of male speaker
This image shows a male presenter voice uttering a statement-based question 'Virginia? You're from Virginia'. Three words are monosyllabic while Virginia is a tri-syllabic word. In both cases of 'Virginia' at the beginning and at the end, the first syllable is unstressed while the second syllable
is more stressed than the third syllable with the third syllable having a longer duration. The comparison of male and female utterances while delivering statement-based questions (Mongolia+Virginia) shows that females emphasise more at the end syllable while males tend to stress the second syllable.
The intonation is high at the end syllable of Virginia and lower at the starting syllable. The highest intonation is 307.5 hertz at the end of the statement while the lower is 157.3 hertz. The intensity also varies between 49.2db to 79.3db from soft to loud tone. Thus, the analysis shows that TED Talks speakers have varied intonation and stress patterns.
Prominent Lexico-Semantic Features of TED Talks
This part of the analysis deals with the findings of the following research question: a. Which linguistic features are prominent at the lexico-semantic level? Slang Words
Slangs are informal expressions that are used in informal conversations and avoided in academic and professional writing (e.g. Emails), speeches and presentations. Such expressions are seldom used to exchange information. Here are more frequent slang words used in TED Talks.
Table 4.2: Frequency distribution of slang words in TED Talks
Sr. No Slang Meaning Frequency
1 Show up Arrive at an event/embarrass 116
2 Cool Relaxed or calm. 100
3 Cash Money 94
5 Dude Man 23
6 Ex An old relationship 22
7 Hang out To spend time with others 22
8 Fed up Tired of 16
9 LOL Laugh out loud 13
10 Chill Relaxed or calm. 12
Formal and Colloquial Words
The use of Standard English, complex sentence structure, occasional use of personal pronouns and lack of colloquial words are characteristics of formal language. Conversely, informal languages have non-standardized English forms, shorter sentences and colloquial lexicons. Colloquial language is a style of conversation with a primary focus on interaction. An example of deletion of a subject in 'got the time' (Do you have the time) is also found 1 time in TED Talks. Partridge (1990) considers that colloquialism contains five types: single words, clipped words, short pictures vocabulary for technical terms and verb-adverb combination. The results of the IETTC corpus show that TED Talks contain colloquial expressions with the purpose to interact with the audience and keep them engaged.
Table 4.3: Frequency distribution of clipped words in comparison with their original lexicon Clipped words/
Sr. No Frequency Original Word/ Formal Frequency
Informal
1 Phone 509 Telephone 58
2 Lab 366 Laboratory 91
3 Plane 175 Airplane 87
4 Photo 148 Photograph 121
5 Thanks 144 Thank You 2013
6 Bike 111 Motorbike 5
7 Ad 69 Advertisement 7
8 Exam 48 Examination 11
9 Gym 31 Gymnasium 1
10 Bio 25 Biology 240
Based on the observation of the table above, it is explored that the frequency of some extracted clipped words is more significant in TED Talks corpus than their original formal expressions except for a few examples (thank you, biology and teenager etc.). When it comes to single-word informal expression, the word guys (56) is less frequently used than men (772) while the term 'tremendous' (135) frequency is high in comparison with its formal expression excellent (75) in the TED Talk corpus. 'Eye candy' is a noun that means 'taste good to eyes' or highly attractive. This informal expression is used 4 times in TED Talks. Another expression 'y'all' is a US dialect used instead of 'you all'. The term 'cyborg', a blended form of two nouns (cyber+organism), is also used multiple times in TED Talks. Likewise, short and picturesque words serve as an alternative term to another technical term. The term 'bugs' is observed in the talks 49 times that represent 'insect' or 'mechanical fault'.
Table 4.4: Frequency distribution of contractions in comparison with their formal expressions
Sr. No Contractions/ Informal Frequency Formal Frequency
1 It's 14786 It is 2557
2 You're 3875 You are 927
3 I've 2179 I have 1629
4 Haven't 358 Have not 118
5 Gonna 56 Going to 5652
6 Y'all 36 You all 191
7 Gotta 30 Have got to 15
8 Wanna 4 Want to 3671
9 Gimme 4 Give me 99
10 Kinda 3 Kind of 2716
Meanwhile, idioms and phrasal verbs represent informal varieties of language in order to make vocabulary simple and comprehensible. Get together (36), come across (23), look into (26), let down (2), put up with (5), make up (121) and take part in (5) are a few examples of phrasal verbs in the TED Talks. Simple and Complex Terms
Speeches tend to have simple vocabulary such as business, thing, nice, really, well, you know, etc. TED Talks contain both simple and complex terms. The complexity of the words depends on the number of morphemes used in a single word e.g. interconnectedness (inter-connect-ed-ness), trustworthiness (trust-worthy-ness), assertiveness (assert-tive-ness), foolishness (fool-lish-ness) and drunkenness (drunk-en-ness) etc. in the TED corpus. Open vs Closed Class Words
Open class or content words provide the majority of meanings in a language e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. On the other hand, close class, grammatical or functional words are used to link open class words in meaningful sentences i.e. prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns and determiners.
Table 4.5 :Frequency Distribution of Most Frequent open class words
Sr. No Nouns Frequency Verbs Frequency Adjectives Frequenc y
1 People 13098 Know 8501 Some 6615
2 Time 7225 Think 7492 Good 3514
3 World 7147 Going 7267 First 3482
4 Way 5836 Get 6787 Little 3424
5 Years 5416 See 6644 Different 3324
6 Things 5328 Make 5335 Big 1992
7 Life 3709 Did 5334 Great 1631
8 Human 2524 Want 5126 Real 1357
9 Fact 2092 Go 4755 Second 1228
10 Idea 2048 Say 3865 Important 1227
It is evident from the above table that the frequency of content words is significant in TED Talks with the noun 'people' being a highly used content word (13098) in the whole corpus that is itself a concrete/collective noun. A concrete noun is something material and non-abstract that can be experienced using the five senses while collectively representing the groups of single entities. 'Time' and 'world' are the second and third most frequent collective/abstract and concrete nouns. Thus, the use of both these highly used terms indicates a single entity in TED Talks in the form of when I (speaker) and 'you' (the audience-collective noun) become 'we' (speaker +audience/plural). Fact and idea are two commonly-occurred abstract nouns. Likewise, 'know' ( 8501) is the most frequent verb in the talks that usually collocates with the pronoun 'I' (57087) on the right side. Similarly, 'think' (7492) is the second most frequent verb that is usually preceded by the pronoun
'I'. This combination of 'I+know' and I+think forms two-word lexical bundles, which is a style of conversation in which a subject pronoun is followed by a verb. There is also a variety of descriptive terms in the TED Talks e.g. important (adj. of quality).
Table 4.6: Frequency of top-ten functional words in TED Talks
Sr. No Pronouns Frequency Preposition Frequency Conjunction Frequenc y
1 I 57087 Of 85958 And 11103
2 It 53107 For 24444 But 21631
3 We 50359 With 19777 Or 12316
4 You 49934 On 19566 Because 9616
5 They 24245 To 17049 Instead 1137
6 Our 13392 About 15221 Rather 673
7 My 12900 From 12188 In 567
8 Their 9045 In 11828 However 456
9 He 9241 By 10052 Therefore 251
10 Your 9240 Up 8470 Otherwise 208
Table results show that the expression 'I' is the most frequently occurring 'pronoun' that usually co-occur with 'think' (3046 times) and 'know' (1136 times) in ITECC. Another three-word lexical bundle (I know a) is also visible in the image below that follows a pronoun+verb+article structure. A five-word lexical structure 'I know a lot of' is also used 9 times in the text while the addition of the most frequent noun 'people' also constitutes a six-word lexical bundle. The frequency of 'I', 'we' and 'you' is again high in the text which again hits the audience and speakers' involvement during talks. Conjunctions are expressions used to connect a phrase, clause or sentence. Additive conjunction 'and' is used 11,103 times in the whole corpus with the purpose to extend the information in a phrase, clause or sentence.
Inserts are a newly-defined lexical category that is not an integral part of the syntactic structure but is inserted freely to convey emotional and interactional meaning. They are most frequent in spoken conversation, simple in form but deviant in phonological structure. For instance, yeah (825), ahem-short cough for attention (3) bye (13), cheers (3), boo-to scare someone (1), ugh-disgust (5), woo-hoo (2) hmm-confusion (31), hey-call for attention (236), awoo (4), ah (146), oh (796), huh (28), yuck-disgust (7) yay-well done (9), wow-surprise (139), shhh-be quite (2), quite aww-expresses adoration (5), ouch-pain (3), hurray-happiness (1), oops-error (14) and uh-huh (1) interjections are observed in the TED Talks. They all are expressions of stance, but not complete words, used to represent sounds individuals make in conversation. These filler words are actually useful and have a significant role in the conversation. Jargon
Particular linguistic expressions and technical words of a field represent concepts, ideas and processes of a particular domain and are used for specialised needs to understand that discourse community. TED Talks are also enriched with field-specific jargon that differentiates the style of a topic from others. Music (601), play (406), video (173), audience (172), song (106) and dance (105) are particular technical terms of the entertainment-related topics of TED Talks while technology
(550), data (411) computer (281), machine (229), robot (186), internet (179), digital (165), robots(161) and online (145) vocabulary expressions most frequently occurred in technology-related TED Talks. Cohesion
Cohesion refers to a text or sentence's grammatical and lexical relationship that requires two elements, a referent and a tie to it. A paradigm example of such a cohesive relationship from TED Talks is given below:
"Cryptocurrencies are digital money that isn't run by any government or bank. It's money designed to work in a world without intermediaries".
It is evident from the above example that 'it' in the second sentence refers back to (anaphora) to cryptocurrencies (referent) in the first sentence. This anaphoric function of 'it' gives cohesion to the two sentences while the two sentences together constitute a text as a whole. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the star of the show, one of the greatest jazz legends of our time. Music lovers and jazz lovers alike, please give a warm hand of applause for the one and onlyMr. Peeping Tom.
In the above lines, the TED speaker has used the terms the 'the star of the show', one of the greatest', one and only semantic cohesion terms that cataphorically refer to Mr. Peeping Tom afterwards.
There are two ways by which cohesive ties are created (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) grammatical and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion includes conjunction, substitution, reference and ellipses.
Grammatical Cohesion Conjunctions
Conjunction words are linking devices between sentences or clauses in a text such as but, when, and, so, or, unless etc. They provide information regarding the 'logical-semantic' relation between sentences and arrange the text in a certain logical order to make it meaningful for the reader or listener. Conjunctions are of four types, additive, adversative, causal, and temporal.
Table 4.11: Frequencies percentage of additive conjunctions in TED Talks
Sr. No Additive Conjunction Frequency
1 And 48.828
2 That 30.514
The following table shows the frequency percentage of additives in TED Talks. Additive conjunctions link the units of semantic similarity. 'And' and 'that' are highly used additives in TED Talks that connect the sentences. The results show that TED speakers used a diversity of additives in their talks.
Table 4.12 frequencies percentage of adversative conjunctions in TED Talks
Sr. No Adversative Conjunction Frequency
1 But 66.054
2 Only 13.013
Adversative conjunctions are used to express opposition or contrasting opinions. For instance, 'but' is a highly used adversative conjunction in TED Talk that is used to link ideas to contrasting statements. Moreover, this expression is normally used in arguments. This type of conjunction joins two independent clauses and formulates a compound sentence. 'But' is seen in the sense of contrast and negation in the conversation for being interactive. The TED speakers use this term to modify their statements, express a contrary opinion or reject a suggestion. The high frequency of 'but' and the subordinators indicates that more clauses are there as they are clause -level connectors. 'Only' is another frequent adversative conjunction. As a verb, it is used to indicate that something is limited to some things, individuals or people while as a conjunction only
to replace 'but' etc. The overall comparison of adversative with additive shows that the percentage of adversative conjunction 'but' (68.25) is higher with frequently occurring additive conjunction 'and' (51.06).
Table 4.13: Frequencies percentage of causal conjunctions in TED Talks
Sr. No Causal Conjunction Frequency
1 So 41.946
2 As 28.267
The table shows that 'so' is the highest causal conjunction that is used to introduce a cause, purpose and reason. 'As' is the second highest causal conjunction. 'So' and 'yet' are coordinating conjunctions. Causal conjunctions link clauses, use in the middle of the sentence or even use at the start of the sentence. 'So' provides an explanation of the information stated previously. In TED Talks, the density of the coordinating conjunction 'so' and subordination conjunction 'as' is higher if it is used to introduce a nominal clause.
Table 4.14: Frequency percentage of temporal conjunctions in TED Talks
SR. No Temporal Conjunction Frequency
1 Now 22.224
2 Here 13.362
'Now' and 'here' are more frequently occurring conjunctions in TED Talks showing temporal relations to express the time order of the events. Now mostly comes with that but in informal spoken conversation 'that' is usually omitted. This conjunction refers to something new and its consequences. The temporal relations express the events with reference to time frames and the second sentence after the temporal conjunctions occur later. Reference
Reference refers to the situation in which one linguistic element is semantically interpreted when it is referred to another element in the text. For instance, pronouns, articles and demonstratives are used for referential purposes. Personal and demonstrative pronouns are types of references that refer backwards or forward to a particular referent (anaphora &cataphora).
'I', 'it', 'you' and 'we' are the most frequent personal pronouns used as subjects. 'I', and 'we', are first and second-person pronouns and 'you' is the second-person pronoun which most of the interlocutors (speaker & hearer) use during conversation while 'it' refers to an inanimate object. 'He', 'she', 'it' and 'they' are third person pronouns. The high frequency of pronouns as subject, especially 'I' that refers back to the speaker, indicates TED speakers use these cohesive devices to refer to themselves and the audience. Meanwhile, Ted speakers use the term 'we' to refer to I (speaker)+you (audience). In the TED corpus 'I' is the most used term which is used when speakers give their own personal point of view. Conversely, the frequency of pronouns as an 'object' is minimal in comparison with the subject and the same thing applies to the possessive case. The use of first and second-person pronouns is common in conversations in which interlocutors are in immediate contact and discuss matters of immediate concern. In the third person (he, she), masculine forms supersede the feminine forms as in this corpus. Demonstrative pronouns help to understand whether the referent is near or distant from the addressee. When demonstrative nouns are used to refer to humans they need a determiner plus noun.
"We looked at it and we said, let's devolve to these people, let's give these people a company where we take away all the boarding school aspects of, this is when you arrive, this is how you dress, this is how you go to meetings, this is what you say, this is what you don't say, and let's see what's left".
In the following example, 'these people' indicate the use of a demonstrative pronoun to show human referent while the singular form 'this' refers to the preceding clause or text. 'This' is also
RUSSIAN LAW JOURNAL Volume XI (2023) Issue 5
used cataphorically to refer to 'you' in the preceding lines. Sometimes a sequence of demonstrative pronouns also includes substitutions.
The frequency of definite article/determiner 'the' is highest in the overall TED corpus with indefinite article 'a' contribution to introduce new information is also significant. This means that speakers have used definite articles more to explain the information already known by the listeners. The frequency of 'an' is lower in comparison with the other two determiners.
Substitution
Substitution is employed when a linguistic expression is replaced by another text in the item to avoid repetition and it lies in the relation between words.
Let's do this simply. Squeeze your hand tight. Do you feel the poker chip in your hand? J: I do. In the above example, the answer to the whole sentence is given using a simple two-word linguistic expression 'I do' that is used as a substitute to avoid repetition as in verbal substitution. "We asked people, "Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars?" And if they said yes, they built it".
In the above phrase, 'if they said so' has replaced the whole sentence asked before to convey the positive without repeating a single word.
"Our queen is the lone survivor of her old hive, and now, she must become the foundress of a new one!
In the above lines 'hive' is a noun that is further replaced by 'one' in the next clause.
"Are you horrified by the idea of eating bacteria? I'm sure some of you are. Well, if so, I've got bad
news for you. You eat them with every meal".
The above excerpt is a good example of clausal substitution in which 'if so' has replaced the whole previous clause and omitted it.
Simile
This figure of speech is one of the most effective means to make speech expressive and make comparisons between two ideas with shared qualities. In the present research, the structural features of similes are explored in the TED Talks. It is observed that 'as' has a higher frequency (3965 times) than 'like' (2162 times). Metaphors
Metaphoric expressions are ways to describe unfamiliar feelings and situations where literal meanings are inadequate. They reveal the speaker's creativity to talk about a thing by describing something else. The pattern of metaphors used in spoken interactions helps us to understand the context of social interactions. Many metaphorical expressions are used by TED speakers to express ideas through comparisons. Some examples are as follows:
My teacher taught me, says the girl, "that the world is a living tapestry. The wind and the waves are woven together with the forests and grasslands, threaded with the deserts and snowy regions, and all living things are knit together in mutuality. Although each place has its own pattern, the tapestry is one. As the weave of life is torn apart in one place, the threads unravel in another." In the above example from 'A sci-fi story of climate optimism', the metaphorical expression 'living tapestry' indicates the world. Tapestry is a thick textile fabric designed by weaving colourful threads. The speaker explains that all the living and non-living things such as winds and waves, grassland and forests are woven together in mutuality within one tapestry. When the weave of life ends in one place, this also influences the threads in other places. This means that climate effects are not limited to a single region because we are all part of this world. Thus, if some area is affected by climate change, we will all suffer its consequences.
"There's a great big elephant in the room called the economy. So let's start talking about that". In this example, 'elephant in the room' is a metaphorical idiom used to explain a controversial issue 'economy'. So a TED speaker tries to draw the audience's attention to important issues by using a metaphorical expression that cannot be ignored. In the later the discussion, the speaker discussed major issues related to the economy and gave advice to the largest investors in the United States.
Discourse Style of TED Talks
Biber's (1988) multi-feature multidimensional approach is a precise way to explore and understand prominent linguistic features that constitute the discourse of a genre e.g. TED Talks in present research. The graph below shows MAT (v. 1.3.2) outcomes of TED Talks based on the five functional dimensions of Biber (1988).
Figure 4.20: Comparison of TED Talks along 5 Dimensions
It is interesting to note that TED Talks have positive scores on dimension 1 which means they have involved discourse with an average mean score of 7.27. Meanwhile, the negative scores on dimension 2 indicate that TED Talks contain features of non-narrative discourse. Likewise, positive values in dimensions 3 and 4 present the TED Talks genre as explicit and persuasive discourse. The negative scores on dimension 5 show that talks are not abstract and contain less technical information. On the other hand, the closest text types of dimension 1, 3 and 4 as per MAT result is prepared speeches.
Table 4.17: Distribution of highest, lowest and mean scores across all dimensions
Dimension Highest Score Lowest Score Mean Score
D1 50.02 -26.08 7.27
D2 11.78 -7.38 -2.35
D3 22.69 -7.85 1.47
D4 18.35 -9.27 0.22
D5 10.38 -3.92 -0.41
The highest score on D1 is 50.02 while the lowest score is -26.08 with a mean score is 7.27 which indicates some TED Talks have an information focus while the majority contain involved discourse with an overall average value makes this genre an interactive and involved discourse. Similarly, many TED Talks follow a narrative style but still, they are overweighed by TED Talks having a non-
narrative style with a mean score of -2.35. TED Talks are also explicit and non-explicit at the same time with average values (1.47) marked as explicit. Meanwhile, the 18.35 highest value shows that TED Talks have a persuasive and argumentative flavour but a lower score of -7.37 makes it less argumentative with average scores falling in positive scores. Conversely, the mean score of TED Talks on D5 indicates that they are non-abstract in nature.
4. FURTHER DISCUSSION
This section elaborates that TED Talks have their own unique stylistic features that distinguish them from other genres.
Discussion on Phonological Style of TED Talks
The findings indicate that TED speakers have distinct styles of using phonological devices including both segmental and suprasegmental phonemes to make the sound pleasant for mind and soul. They tend to use different phonological devices during face-to-face interaction which is marked by significant use of alliteration and onomatopoeia to make the sound emotive and meaningful. The findings reveal that lexical onomatopoeia is more common in TED Talks than non-lexical expressions. Sugahara (2011) also explored onomatopoeia in LOB and LLC corpus during doctoral theses while Bourdji (2017) also analysed the use of this phonological device in terms of child language learning. These features are more common in poetry and prose but their presence in TED Talks indicates that are not limited to literary language but their application in non-literary language is also possible.
Both male and female speakers tend to have varied stress, intonation and intensity patterns. Females emphasize more on the utterance of words in comparison with males. The findings show that female presenters in the TED Talks have higher intonation than males. Males have a lower pitch than females. According to Fletcher (1953), voice intensity at 86dB is consideredloud, 46dB as soft and 60dB as a whisper. Meanwhile, Koffi (2020) considers 47-65 dB as a normal voice, 66-75 dB as a raised voice, and 87-97 dB as a shout. The findings of speakers' voice intensity show that they use loud voices to explain their viewpoints. The female voices were louder at some points in comparison with the male and vice versa. Discussion on Lexico-Semantic Style of TED Talks
TED Talks is typically associated with face-to-face interaction with the audience. This interaction is marked by a dense frequency of pronouns and a low frequency of nouns grammatically which is also a characteristic of conversation. The distribution of situational knowledge is more evident, particularly in first and second-person pronouns, particularly in the case of 'I' and 'you'. Slang, formal and colloquial words, jargon, and open and close class words are prominent linguistic elements on the lexical level. Moreover, the use of ellipsis and contracted forms along with pronouns further simplify the grammatical structure ( I've been in politics...). Finally, no instances of neologism are observed in the corpus although the researcher is doubted that the words 'nowist', 'nowists', 'TED Women' and 'TEDizens' are new words first time used in TED Talks.
Different types of connectives are observed in the talks by observing the use of grammatical devices such as conjunctions, substitution and co-reference (anaphora &cataphora). Adversative and additive conjunctions are more common in the text and are used to express contrasting opinions and link the units of semantic similarity simultaneously. 'But' the most frequent conjunction joins two independent clauses of contrasting viewpoints to make a compound sentence and is significant in conversations like TED Talks. TED Talks have a high density of pronouns in comparison with nouns, verbs and adjectives. The findings revealed that the pronouns as subjective or objective case, possessive and demonstratives are used to refer backwards or forward which is called anaphora and cataphora. They both are anaphoric references found within the texts. The use of demonstrative pronouns is also significant in the talks that are used to portray the location of the referent from the audience. Noun and demonstrative pronouns have been used to indicate a human referent. Another interesting use is of the 'that' demonstrative pronoun that characterizes a spoken discourse to give explicit meaning while this expression is also commonly
used along with wh-clefts and as tags. Definite article use in the TED Talks is also significant that speakers use to convey already given information to the listeners.
Instances from transcribed files of TED talks show that TED speakers use all types of substitutions at nominal, verbal and clausal levels to avoid the use of repeated words. Simile as a feature of figurative speech not only makes the speech expressive but also comparisons of different ideas easy. 'Like', 'as', and then are a few linguistic expressions or linking words that exist along phrase structure to compare abstract or abstract, abstract or concrete and concrete or concrete ideas. At present, similes are not limited to literature and poetry but also used in political speeches (Ullah, 2021) and monologues and dialogue-based TED Talks for aesthetic pleasure and conveying hidden ideas. Likewise, metaphorical utterances are observed in interactions that are used by the speaker to convey symbolic meaning. In a previous study by Lee (2014) the metaphors are used in the same genre but in particular fields of EFL. Thus, this figure of speech is not only characteristic of literary language but non-literary spoken genres also employ this rhetorical device to adorn their speeches with symbols.
Discussion on Discourse Style of TED Talks
The findings reveal that the English of TED Talks is highly interactive and has a non-abstractive style adorned with explicit and persuasive linguistic features. The best mode of production with verbal style is conversation including face-to-face or telephone which are typically less informational with more personal linguistic context. The positive scores on DI, D3 and D4 indicate that this spoken genre is close to speeches with reference to text types. First-person pronouns e.g. 'I' and 'we' are the first and third most frequent words in content words that give the speeches communicating touch. It can be said that TED speakers tend to be more involved with the audience and more proficient to produce contextualised sentences with correct grammar (Thompson, 2014). On Dimension/Factor 1, titled 'involved versus informational' scores have interactive and involved linguistic elements (contractions, first and second-person pronouns, private verbs and present tense) that are characteristics of discourse produced in the real-time situation as in TED Talks. The findings of the current research show similarity with MDA analysis of speaking and writing in the university (Biber et al, 2002) in which service encounters, office hours and classroom management showed positive scores on this dimension. Another research work on the speaking style of learner speech (Cheng, 2021) also marked involved and interactive discourse. In Dimension 2, 'Narrative versus non-narrative discourse', there is the absence of narrative features that marked occasional usage of past tense, important to report matters of immediate matters or reports past events without mixing the both. Service encounters and classroom teaching in MDA analysis of speaking and writing in the university by Biber et al (2002) and speaking style of learner speech (Cheng, 2021) also showed negative values on dimension 2.
Positive scores along Dimension 3, titled as explicit, context-independent reference vs. situation-dependent reference make TED Talks referentially explicit that is also informational and integrated. Present results are not in-line with the outcomes of face-to-face interactions e.g. office hours, service encounters, classroom teaching (Biber et al, 2002), telephone conversations and radio recordingsas they are usually situation dependent. However, this genre stands significant in terms of explicitness for being pre-planned and decided. Dimension 4 results reflect an overtly persuasive style. Office hours, service encounters and classroom teachings are some spoken registers (Biber et al, 2002) that range from the factual presentation of events to persuasive consideration of possibilities
Dimension 5 deals with abstract versus non-abstract style (impersonal vs. non-impersonal) with positive scores convey more abstract information e.g. academic documents while negative scores deal with less abstract information as in telephone conversations and face-to-face interactions. Overall, TED Talks follow a non-abstract style of speaking. TED Talks convey information in easy-to-understand methods with simple lexical variety.
5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS
The main objective of this research is the notion that TED Talks have their own unique features that make this public speaking forum a separate genre. Based on this concept, stylistic patterns in influential English TED Talks were explored through triangulation research methods. The findings of the study indicate that particular linguistic choices have been used during digital content creation to persuade the audience. TED Talks consists of formal and colloquial lexis, content and functional words, jargon, slang, simile, metaphors and so forth. The particular discourse style of TED Talks makes it unique in being interactive, involved, persuasive and non-narrative. The outcomes seem fair to summarize TED Talks as a distinct genre of public speaking.
The present study is a significant contribution for academics and learners that will further enhance their understanding of the style of various classic and contemporary writers and speakers. Likewise, syllabus designers can design different courses to improve the speaking and writing skills of students and let them understand how to speak differently in different situations. Academics can use the corpus techniques used in the research in classroom teaching to enhance students' exposure to the field and expedite the meaningful research process. The researcher suggests the future researchers explore the topic at a broader scale to investigate the individual speaker's style of TED Talks. The outcomes of the present research can also be compared with other unexplored genres such as podcasts, vodcasts, political speeches, interviews, presentations and other formal and informal conversations.
REFERENCES
[1] Anthony, L. (2020). AntConc (Version 3.5.9). Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University.
[2] Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Biber, D., Conrad, S., Reppen, R., Byrd, P., &Helt, M. (2002). Speaking and Writing in the University: A Multidimensional Comparison. TESOL Quarterly, 36(1), 9-48.
[4] Caliendo, G., &Compagnone, A. (2014). Expressing epistemic stance in University lectures and TED talks: a contrastive corpus-based analysis. Lingue e Linguaggi, 11, 105-122.
[5] Carlo, G. S. (2018). Patterns of clusivity in TED talks: When 'you' and 'I' become 'we'. Iberica. 2018. 119-144.
[6] Cheng, T. (2021). A multidimensional analysis: speaking style of learner speech across proficiency levels. Association for Computational Linguistics. pp 149-159.
[7] Dzhabrailova, V. S., Alekseeva, O. P., &Zaripova, N. R. (2019). Translation strategies of TED Talks as a new linguistic phenomenon. World of Science Series:Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 10(4).
[8] Fletcher, H. (1953). Speech and Hearing in Communication. New York: D. Van NostrandCompany, Inc.
[9] Goldman, J. P., Prsir, T., Christodoulides, G., &Auchlin, A. (2014). Speaking style prosodic variation: an 8-hours 9-style corpus study. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Speech Prosody, p. 105.
[10]Grace, L., & Walker, M. (2017). Stylistic Variation in Television Dialogue for Natural Language Generation. Proceedings of the Workshop on Stylistic Variation, pages 85- 93, Copenhagen, Denmark.
[11]Khajornphaiboon, P., &Vungthong, S. (2019). Analyzing the introduction of TED Talks: A corpus-based analysis of discourse organization.
[12]Koffi, E. (2020). A Comprehensive Review of Intensity and Its Linguistic Applications, Linguistic Portfolios. Vol 9(2).
[13]Konovalova, E., &Nizamieva, M. (2020). Stylistic devices and expressive means in ted talks lectures on architecture and construction. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering.
[14]Li, X., & Li, F. (2020). Gender Difference in Hedging: A Corpus-Based Study to TED Talks about Emotion. Creative Education, 11, 2106-2115.
[15]Martikainen, K. (2020). Audio-based stylistic characteristics of Podcasts for search and recommendation: a user and computational analysis.
[16]Mehrabian, A. (1981). Silent messages: Implicit communication of emotions and attitudes (2nd Ed.). Wadsworth Pub. Co.
[17]Murphy, S. (2015). I will proclaim myself what I am: Corpus stylistics and the language of Shakespeare's soliloquies. Language and Literature, 24(4), 338-354.
[18]Nini, A. (2019). The Multi-Dimensional Analysis Tagger. Multi-Dimensional Analysis: Research Methods and Current Issues, 67-94, London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
[19]Partridge, E. (1990). Colloquialisms in the encyclopedia Americana. USA: Grolier Incorporated.
[20]Rong, J. (2021). An Analysis on Stylistic Features of Donald Trump's Speech. International Journal of English Linguistics.
[21]Sugahara, T. (2011). Onomatopoeia in Spoken and Written English : Corpus- and Usage-based Analysis.
[22]Thompson, G. (2014). Introducing Functional Grammar. (3rd ed) pp. 1-12. Routledge, London.
[23]Uicheng, K., & Crabtree, M. (2018). Macro Discourse Markers in Ted Talks: How Ideas Are Signaled to Listeners. PASAA: Journal of Language Teaching and Learning in Thailand, 55, 1-3.
[24]Ulfah, R., &Hidayat, D.N. (2020). A Critical Discourse Analysis of Parts of Speech from TED-Talk Video: How Language Shapes the Way We Think.
[25]Ullah, S., Zahra, T., Khan, F., Ahmad, A., &Naz, A. (2021). Exploring Simile in Political Speeches through Corpus Techniques. Palarch's Journal Of Archaeology Of Egypt/Egyptology 18(4).
