GENDER AND PROSODY OF DIRECTIVES IN GERMAN
Aim. The article describes the results of the research conducted in order to determine whether a speaker’s gender is a deciding factor influencing the prosody of demands, threats and informal requests in German and interfering with identification of the these speech acts as directives. Methodology. During the experiment fundamental frequency (f0), sound intensity (volume) and syllable duration of informal requests, threats and demands uttered by female and male speakers were measured in key syllables of the phrases in order to define the nature of the influence of a speaker’s gender on delivery of directives in German. The acquired data underwent acoustic analysis, mathematical and statistical processing as well as linguistic interpretation. Results. The results of the experiment show that a speaker’s gender cannot be considered the key factor regarding directive speech act perception, identification and formation. Research Implications. The data acquired in the course of the experiment may be used in oral speech linguistic examination, in studies of oral utterance formation and perception processes in German and gender-based features of oral speech at universities.