Alan Rabonowitz

In Alan Rabonowitz's story "Man and Beast," there were some very interesting messages. Before I start to describe some of the phonetic elements, and discourse observations, I am going to apologize in advance for any strange spelling areas that I might miss with spell check. I have been transcribing, and I am tempted to write everything phonetically.

In terms of Phonetics, Dr. Rabonowitz used many different vocal choices in his telling. As he began the story, it was easy to see that the tone was going to be soft, somewhat melodic, and laid back. He used a whisper at the beginning f the story, especially when he spoke of the Jaguars cage at the zoo in the Bronx. His breathing was very heavy, especially at the beginning of his story. His sounds seemed anticipated as if he had written the story, and had practiced it many times. This matches earlier observations about the way that tellers at the Moth typically prepare their stories. The phonetics of this story seemed to be very influenced by the high level of emotion that encompassed the entire tale. When he said "The New York City Public School System," and the word, "parents" about 2.5 minutes into his story, he started introducing more volume to match the emotional frustration of the memory recall that he was experiencing in that moment (although it seemed as if he had practiced the story multiple times, the emotion seemed to me to be genuine in the actual recorded telling). There were certain moments in the story in which Dr. Rabonowitz seemed to display a more heavily influenced NY accent. Examples would include the words, "like me," "stupid," and "Forest" These moments generally signified that he was conveying ideas that were held by his peers (particularly negative ideas), and things that signified that he was going, doing, and experiencing new things. These emotional moments in the story seemed like the times in witch he switched his accent to the NY style. At these times especially, there were some vowel transformations that are typical in NY accents (i.e. York changes from York to something like Yewrk). The plosive syllables are also more emphatic in the NY dialect (One example came near to the end when he said, "This was my life!" but there were many others when he used b's and p's especially.)

Rabonowitz also had a tendency to stretch certain words to give them more meaning. One example would be the use of the word, "years" which occurred around the 7 minute marker in the story. He also stretched vowels and used pauses constantly to add emphasis to certain words, ideas, and emotions. Another vocal change that he used to add emphasis was a heightening of his pitch. This change of tone was particularly emphatic when it occurred because his tone was so consistently low-key for the majority of his performance. A couple of instances that stood out to me where when he began to talk about how he was going to Central America. Two sentences in particular were, "I was driving into the jungle!" and "I learned how to capture the Jaguars!"