INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL FACTORS ON INTONATION PECULIARITIES OF AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

The article is devoted to intonational patterns of the speech of modern Australian business environment (businessmen, economists) representatives and the dependence of intonation on social characteristics of communicants. In our opinion, this issue is one of important directions of modern linguistics. The target audience of economic discourse has a particular impact on the tonal composition of language. The material of the study included several sources, containing samples of natural speech representing interview response cues. A complex method of research, which combines theoretical and analytical method, the electron-acoustic analysis and comparative method and linguistic interpretation of the data, was used. Now in the era of wide spread and development of the mass media the most important way of influence in popular culture and in the business environment is oral speech which also serves as a means of image formation. Language is a social phenomenon, and it cannot exist independently, it can be affected by a wide variety of social factors: economic, political, cultural, historical and others. Australian English has incorporated the features of different ethnic groups and has a two-fold meaning for the public and linguistic identity. Evaluating the Australian variant as a whole, extrinsically, we can note its recognizability, unlike other variants of the English language, which makes it an interesting area to explore. Following the Australian linguists Mitchell and Delbridge, who made basic observations concerning the origin of the Australian pronunciation, we explore the area of Australian intonation peculiarities. Australian English intonation is characterized by less sharp increase and decrease of tone within the statements, so the intonation of the British variant is perceived even in the statements of the same type as more lively and emotional, compared to a smooth and monotonic Australian. There are differences in intonation and certain types of questions in some traditional clichйs, but they are just beginning to be studied seriously. The article discusses the relative degree of influence of a range of social factors on the intonation of Australians, in particular, the regional factor (factor of geographical origin), which is closely intertwined with the socio-historical and socio-economic living conditions in different regions of Australia, as well as the impact of contacting variants of the English language.