Italian Teacher Talk

A rhythmical-prosodic comparison between L1 and L2 contexts

Abstract

Teacher talk shares many of the linguistic features of other kinds of simplified registers (foreigner talk, baby talk, elderspeak), in which listener-oriented modifications are used with different addressees who may not be fully competent in the language. The present study intends to investigate rhythmical-prosodic features in the speech of two female teachers of Italian, both from the Campania region, aged 44 and 48. They were recorded in two different educational settings: in secondary schools, teaching to native Italian students; in L2 Italian classes for immigrants hosted by a voluntary association in Naples. Eight monologic samples were selected from the corpus and spectroacustically analysed, allowing the calculation of articulation rate, speech rate, fluency, speech time composition and tonal range. Results show that when teachers speak to non-native learners, they do not modify the rate at which they articulate phones; instead they use longer and more frequent silent pauses and a more reduced tonal range than with native students.