Teacher Discussion Forums

Hey, I was talking to a colleague about intonation with idioms. We came to the conclusion that if the idiom has a positive meaning then the intonation will go up, e.g.
I'm over the moon (up)
but if it has a negative meaning then it goes down, e.g.
I'm under the weather (down)

Does anyone agree with this? Thanks,
Stuart

Intonation goes down with declarative sentences with me, so I see no difference like that.

This is essentially correct, I think. However,"the intonation goes up/down" is somewhat ambiguous - intonation means change in pitch, so if you are going to talk about intonation in sentences such as your examples, I think you need to discuss the intonation pattern in the whole utterance, or in a specified part of it - 'falling' or 'rising' intonations being the simplest.
I think I would describe the same phenomenon by saying that the pitch of the stressed syllable (s) in the key words in each sentence (ie O-ver, mOOn, UN-der, WEA-ther) compared with the pitch of the other words is what tends to create either a more positive/upbeat impression or a more negative /gloomy one - a higher pitch for 'positive' or a lower pitch for 'negative'.
'Positive' and 'negative' relate to the temperament of the speaker rather than the innate meanings of the utterances - for example, by replacing the higher pitch with lower, the 'positive' sentence can be made to sound gloomy and negative, as if the speaker were unhappy about being overjoyed!