Roland Kehreins Ansichten in „Prosodie und Emotionen“ und ihre Anwendung im DaF Unterricht
Roland Kehreins Views on “Prosodie und Emotionen” and their Application in GFL Lessons

Summary/Abstract: In coursebooks on German phonetics and phonology the role of prosodic units in the representation of emotional states is presented insufficiently. The monograph “Prosodie und Emotionen” by Roland Kehrein (2002) can be used in GFL lessons as a basis for the analysis and recognition of prosodic phenomena with regard to expression of emotions. This interdisciplinary investigation in the intersection of emotion psychology and prosody gives students the opportunity to familiarize with relevant aspects from both areas. The article presents selected aspects important for the GFL teaching. In the field of emotion research, students get acquainted with emotions as three-sided phenomena (feeling/experience, neuro-psychological reactions, motor-expressive behavior). Furthermore, two approaches to the classification of emotions are analyzed: the categorical and the dimensional use. For the description of emotional utterances dimensional emotion analysis is of great importance. Accordingly, three dimensions – valence, activation and dominance – and the quality: ‘(non-) expectability’ are taken into account. From the field of prosody, students learn the systematic prosody model of German developed by Kehrein, in which the prosodic units with primarily linguistically relevant (syntactic, information-structuring and communication-organizing) functions are described. This model is compared with the classifications presented in traditional prosody research (Trubetzkoy, von Essen). Prosodic units with primarily emotional meanings can be analyzed on that basis. Applying the identified emotion-relevant prosodic units by Kehrein can contribute to the reproduction of emotional qualities as well as to the correct decoding of emotionally charged speech acts in foreign language teaching. Since there are no prosodic patterns for individual emotions, components of meaning are to be analyzed in order to enable casual speech behavior and the reproduction of emotions.

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