When we talk face to face, how do we judge people? Is the interpretation of one's frame of mind always correct if you consider just the words a person speaks?I think we look for body language. Body language tells us a lot more than just the words spoken.
*In a meeting if a person is leaning on his chair, he may be interpreted as not interested.
*If a person is avoiding eye contact during conversation, that means he lacks confidence or has something to hide.
*If a person is biting his lips, that shows nervousness.
*If a person in a conference is sitting with his arms folded, he may be passive or simply against the proceedings!
So the same way, your tone reflects a lot while you speak over phone. Since, over phone people who are involved ina conversation are not able to see each other, we depend on our tone instead of body language to convey our frame of mind or to interpret the same for other speaker.
Intonation is not what we say, rather its how we say!
The same words may have two different meanings depending upon how you say those!Intonation may be used to sound sad, angry, authoritative, happy, respectful, helpful, etc. In daily life we may some time wish to sound sad or frustrated. If a person who is getting bored alone at home may think of calling his friends to go for a movie. In this case he may chose to sound sad so that his friends understand his position and agree to come to make him feel better.
Though proffessionally, you would generally like to sound active, happy, helpful, authoritative, respectful and confident.
Intonation may be applied to Hindi as well, though we do that on rare occassions when we are extremely emotional. Consider Shahrukh Khan delivering his dailogues by simply speaking them out! "Wo sattar minute" speech of Shahrukh would never sound that effective if he just speaks those dailogues out flat! English on the other hand is a musical language. We may not use a lot of intonation as our way of speaking English has a high influence of Hindi!
How do we implement intonation?
Tone can be modulated by gaining a control over PITCH, BREATHINESS, VOLUME, SYLLABLE STRESS, RATE OF SPEECH, etc. Practice makes a man perfect!The best way would be to pick a dailogue, speak it in different ways so the meaning changes every time you modulate the components of speech mentioned above!
*****A Word of Caution*****
You have to analyse the situation before using intonation! No(neutral) intonation may be interpreted as negetive. Sometimes though, it is better not to use any intonation. Let me give you a Hindi specific example:Ehsaan Qureshi uses a lot of intonation. His poetry is more due to the stretches instead of rhyming sentences!But Shakeel Siddiqui does not use any tone! He is perfectly neutral and yet a better comedian!
****************************Disclaimer********************************
Above mentioned article is my personal interpretation of what i have learnt during past couple of days! None of the words are meant to offend any individual or a group throughout this blog. If you feel this way, kindly let me know! If there is any misconception, i'll try my best to clarify or if you find any thing offensive though it may not seem so to me, i'll anyways remove that! This would be my personal choice though! If you are sensitive to certain issues i talk about, i prefer you should not read my views in the first place!
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