WAYS OF REPRESENTING THE PHONETIC LEVEL OF CHILDREN’S SPEECH IN FICTION
Abstract
https://doi.org/10.18522/1995-0640-2025-4-48-58
Abstract. The article focuses on the analysis of two English coming-of-age novels “Room” by E. Donoghue and “The Night Rainbow” by C. King, written from the point of view of pre-school children. This type of narration lets us trace features of children’s speech and identify language markers used for their depiction. Onomatopoeia is the most frequently used device that represents the phonetic level of a child-narrator’s speech. The writers apply it both on their own and in combination with other phonetic stylistic devices: reduplication and alliteration. The authors also analyse graphical stylistic devices, namely capitalization and italics for highlighting onomatopoeic units in the text. In some cases, the writers aim to convey physical characteristics of sounds such as their length and volume. The effect is achieved with the help of the English alphabet. The depiction of the pronunciation features of individual words (contortion of sounds, their exchange, contraction of clusters, etc.) occurs rarely. This might relate to the difficulty of depicting these peculiarities in writing. Such a choice of devices helps demonstrate pre-school children’s interest in the acoustic aspect of the world around them and represents their desire to imitate the sounds that they hear.
Key words: “Room” by E. Donoghue, “The Night Rainbow” by C. King, child-narrator, children’s speech, phonetic level of speech, onomatopoeia
References
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna V. Korolkova
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
