Copyright © 2001 NISC Pty Ltd SOUTHERN AFRICAN LINGUISTICS AND APPLIED LANGUAGE STUDIES EISSN 1727–9461 Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2001 19: 179–196 Printed in South Africa — All rights reserved Prosody and pedagogy in a democratic South Africa Stephen J Cowley School of Psychology, University of Natal, Durban 4001, South Africa e-mail: cowley@nu.ac.za Abstract: This article explores how prosodic patterning influences relationships. Written from an integrational point of view, it highlights the local importance of the issue by examining talk that resounds with a post-apartheid ‘ugly tone’. Two central claims are made. Firstly, much understand- ing is the intertwining of vocalisations. Secondly, we are skilled in interpreting how this joint activity is integrated with word-based patterning. Since we take part in dialogue, we have capacities for responding in real time and, crucially, for making judgements about the unfolding sense of events. Especially where such ways of acting are intrinsic to identity, we need to develop dialogical capacities beyond the ‘in-group’. In the terms of the article, learners can be helped with first-order contextualizing and interactional ascription. By adopting these goals, local ways of speaking and lis- tening become paramount. This leads to a new choice of oral/aural materials and a focus on tasks where learners explain judgements about talk within and across social groups. Emphasis thus goes on enhancing capacities for listening to, interpreting, and rectifying real-time dialogical events. Close examination of local speaking and listening, it is argued, will lead to development of contextually sensitive educational practices. The article adopts a constructivist view by regarding social reality as, to a large degree, the product of joint activity. Important aspects of the world, it is assumed, are brought about through interaction shaped, in part, by capaci- ties for dialogue. 1 If this is indeed the case, it is of interest to examine the real time emergence of joint understanding. In so doing, the article is congruent with the dynamical view that, as Clark (1997) puts it, language extends cogni- tion ‘beyond skull and skin’. My concerns, how- ever, are with practical implications of ‘distrib- uted cognition’. Building on Chick’s practice, I focus on the relevance of these ideas to con- text sensitive education. I will show that attending to prosody can help learners develop cognitive capacities aris- ing in dialogue. All of us, I believe, can gain from finding new ways of engaging with out- group persons and, equally, interpreting these experiences. While joint action is mediated by institutions and artefacts, it is also inseparable from how vocalisations enact social life. As argued below, utterance activity itself mediates the making of reality. We develop cognitive capacities for using voices so that their inter- meshing is intrinsic to the ‘interpretation’ of events. While, at one level, this interplay is pure sound, social and word-based behaviour ensure that, at a higher one, it is a basis for interpretation of interpersonal events. Attuning to speaking in real time guides a person towards grasping the sense of the words, val- ues and beliefs that shape the social construc- tion of cultural realities. Outline of the article While the article necessarily exploits theory, its goals are educational. To link practice with the- ory, I refer, in detail, to a recording of conversa- tional events. Accordingly, in the next section, I introduce events recorded on a tape I have played and discussed with at least 60 South Africans of varying ages, statuses and back- grounds. From the outset, I emphasise my con- cern is neither with details of interpretation (no ‘correct’ construal is proposed) nor, in this arti- cle, with its physical and perceptual basis. While interpretations can be clarified by acoustic investigation (see Cowley, 1994; 1997a; 1997b; 1998), their practical importance does not require academic training in what Introduction