Prefabricated orality at tone level. Bringing dubbing intonation into the spotlight

The focus of this article is placed on dubbing intonation and more specifically on the tonal patterns that are regularly found in dubbed speech and characterise prefabricated orality at tone level. Research suggests that dubbed dialogue is governed by its own network of rules and differs greatly from spontaneous and naturally-occurring speech. The prefabricated nature of this type of dialogue has received attention from many scholars, but no attempt has been made to date to describe orality at tone level from an empirical perspective. The aim of this paper is to search for regularities in the delivery of dubbing intonation in a Spanish corpus and to explore whether they can have an impact on the reception of orality by the Spanish audience. A speech analysis programme has been used to examine a repertoire of tones in a number of extracts from the Spanish dubbed version of the sitcom How I met your mother (Bays & Thomas, 2005–2014). Findings reveal that there are several prefabricated patterns that belong to dubbing intonation itself and that some of the dominant trends found could directly impinge on the target audience’s perception.