Intonation in L2 Discourse: Research Insights: Book Review

Abstract

This book originates exactly from the interest in the discourse functions of intonation. It investigates the phonetic, phonological, and pragmatic functions of L2 English intonation in spoken discourse, grounded in Halliday’s systemic functional linguistic theories and taking advantage of a contrastive inter-language corpus approach. Structurally comprised of ten chapters, the compelling volume is split into two parts. The first part of the volume consists of the theoretical framework and the empirical methodology on which the present research is founded. The second part of the volume includes the findings from contrastive inter-language corpora analysis of Spanish L2 learners and English L1 intonation, analyzing and depicting the intonation patterns used by English L2 and L1 speakers. Surely, this well-organized book is worth reading, especially for researchers and graduate students in applied linguistics and English language teaching.