January 2012

Research Report
Reconsidering “Says It Is Necessary to Take an Emergency Measures” – an Example Phrase for Announcer Training

Intonation Theory on NHK Announcers from a Linguistic Viewpoint

Mitsuru Sugihara

“Says it is necessary to take an emergency measures” is an example phrase that has been used for NHK’s announcer training for almost 30 years. Using a linguistic concept, the author summarizes and examines the intonation theory of announcers that has been developed based on this phrase.

This phrase was introduced by an outside expert in 1975 in a newspaper article that pointed out the unnaturalness of intonation used by NHK announcers. This commentary triggered an argument of “reflecting the meaning of sentence in intonation,” and several methodologies were introduced, centering on the training where announcer read out the phrase to reflect the meaning. However, this idea is yet to be fully understood by announcers in general and trainers. This is because the conventional explanation on those methodologies might lead to a misunderstanding that you should always start the sentence with a rising pitch and then utter in a flat monotone, and it was hard to understand how to apply the method to actual broadcasts and recitation. Therefore, the author adds an explanation of the mechanism of “rising pitch” and “falling pitch” in the middle of sentence from the standpoint of phonetics, looks into the structure of sentence, or whether a certain word would “qualify” or “not qualify” from the standpoint of syntax, and reviews the difference between “the meaning of the sentence itself” that is independent from the context and “pragmatic meaning” that is dependent on the contest from the standpoint of pragmatics. Based on these element reviews, the author explain main points of arguments that have been developed by announcers including Yotaro Sugisawa’s “phrase reading and paragraph reading” and Katsuhiko Hasegawa’s “phonetics of journalism.”

The NHK Monthly Report on Broadcast Research