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IPRA PAPERS IN PRAGMATICSVol. 1, No.1.July 1987
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Opening Remarks .......................................................i
Table of Contents .................................................. iii
CHARLES GOODWIN 6 MARJORIE HARNESS GOODWIN
Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the
interactive organization of assessments ............................. 1
DONALD BRENNEIS
The Fiji Indian pancayat as therapeutic discourse .................. 55
SANDRA A. THOMPSON and WILLIAM C. MANN
Rhetorical structure theory: A framework for the
analysis of texts .................................................. 79
KATHRYN WOOLARD
Codeswitching anal comedy in Catalonia ............................ 106
Notes on Contributors .............................................. 123
Style Sheet ........................................................ 125
iii
Concurrent Operations on Talk: Notes on the Interactive Organization of Assessments
CHARLES GOODWIN MARJORIE HARNESS GOODWIN*
The analysis of conversation has a strong relevance to the study ofpragmatics. Thus in introducing the scope of pragmatics Levinson (1983:284) notes that
It is not hard to see why one should look to conversationfor insight into pragmatic phenomena, for conversation isclearly the prototypical kind of language usage, the formin which we are all first exposed to language - the matrixfor language acquisition.
The field of study that has provided the most extensive analysis of thepragmatic organization of conversation is the line of inquiry initiated bythe late Harvey Sacks and his colleagues.1 Indeed
* We are very deeply indebted to Alessandro Duranti, William Hanks,Gail Jefferson and Emanuel Schegloff for insightful comments andsuggestions on an earlier version of this analysis. This paper wasinitially presented at the Annual Meeting of the American SociologicalAssociation, San Francisco, September 9, 1982.
1. For a detailed study of both work in conversation analysis, and howthat work is relevant to pragmatics in general, see Levinson (1983).See Heritage (1984a) for more extensive treatment of the relationshipbetween conversation analysis and the ethnomethodological tradition itemerged from within sociology, and Heritage (1985) for a detailedsummary of work within the field. For collections of specific analysissee for example Atkinson and Heritage (1984), Button and Lee (inpress), Schenkein (1978), and Zimmerman and West (1980). C.Goodwin (1981) and Heath (1986) examine in detail the
IPRA Papers in Pragmatics 1, No.1 (1987), 1-54
2
Levinson (1983: 285) observes that
if, as
we
shall argue,
the proper
way
to study
conversational organization
is through
empirical
techniques, this suggests that the largely philosophicaltraditions that have given rise to pragm
atics may have to
yield in
the future
to m
ore em
pirical kinds
ofinvestigation of language use.
Though starting from
an ethnomethodological, rather than linguistic or
philosophical, tradition the basic goals of conversation analysis are quitecom
patible with those of pragm
atics. Thus H
eritage and Atkinson (1984:
1) note that
The central goal of conversation analytic research is the
description and explication of the competences that
ordinary speakers use and rely on in participating inintelligible, socially organized interaction. A
t its most
basic, this objective is one of describing the proceduresby w
hich conversationalists produce their own behavior
and understand and deal with the behavior of others. A
basic assumption throughout is G
arfinkel's (1967:1)proposal that these activities - producing conduct andunderstanding and dealing w
ith it - are accomplished as
the accountable products of comm
on sets of procedures.
Much research w
ithin conversation analysis has investigated howsubsequent utterances display an analysis of prior ones, and how
suchsequential organization is a basic resource utilized by participants for theproduction and understanding of action, and the talk that em
bodies it.A
nalysis in the present paper will focus
----------pragm
atic organization of nonvocal phenomena, and processes of
interaction between speakers and hearers that occur w
ithin individualturns at talk, a topic that is quite relevant to the analysis beingdeveloped w
ithin the present paper.
3
instead on
how
individual utterances
and single
turns at
talk are
themselves constituted through an ongoing process of interaction betw
eenspeaker and recipient. T
o do this we w
ill examine the process of assessing
or evaluating entities that are being talked about. Study of this process will
provide an opportunity to investigate within a coherent fram
ework of
action a range of phenomena that are typically studied in isolation from
each other, including:
-H
ow participants achieve, and display to each other, congruent
understanding of the events they are talking about;
-T
he dynamic achievem
ent of social organization within the
turn at talk;-
The interactive organization of affect and em
otion;
-H
ow participants attend in detail to structure in the stream
ofspeech
as a
resource for
the organization
of their
ongoinginteraction.
-T
he integration of speech and body movem
ent within
coherent activity systems.
-T
he way in w
hich activity systems provide organization for
both interaction and the talk occurring within it.
In brief, the analysis of assessments w
ill permit us to analyze the
pragmatic organization of a range of social, linguistic, and cognitive
phenomena, as they are displayed and utilized by participants in the details
of their actual talk.
1 Interaction Within the U
tterance
One very productive strategy for uncovering the interactive
organization of talk has focused on ways in w
hich subsequent utterancesdisplay an analysis of prior ones (S
acks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974:
728). How
ever, despite the great power of this
54
methodology, and in particular its ability to reveal how
participantsthem
selves analyze prior talk in a way relevant to the activities they are
engaged in, there are limitations to it. For exam
ple, with it it is difficult to
determine precisely how
participants attend to utterances as they are beingspoken. T
he treatment that a bit of talk gets in a next utterance m
ay be quitedifferent from
the way in w
hich it was heard and dealt w
ith as it was
spoken; indeed, rather than presenting a naked analysis of the prior talknext utterances characteristically transform
that talk in some fashion - deal
with it not in its ow
n terms but rather in the w
ay in which it is relevant to
the projects of subsequent speaker. Thus w
hile subsequent utterances canreveal crucial features of the analysis participants are m
aking of prior talkthey do not show
how participants hear the talk as it is em
erging in the firstplace, w
hat they make of it then, and w
hat consequences this has for theiractions, not in a next turn, but w
ithin the current turn. From
anotherperspective it can be noted that the stream
of speech is highly organized insyntactic and other w
ays. What, if any, consequences does such structure
have for the organization of action within a turn of talk; for exam
ple when
the utterance manifestations of a noun phrase em
erge within the stream
ofspeech, can the distinctive properties of such a structure (including thesyntactic fram
ework it displays, and the ordering of elem
ents within it) be
used by participants as a resource for the organization of their interactionw
ith each other?In brief it w
ould be valuable to begin to uncover the types oforganization that a strip of talk provides, not sim
ply for subsequent talk,but for the organization of action as it is being spoken.
2 Data and T
ranscription
We w
ill investigate in some detail sequences of conversation recorded on
audio and videotape. The tapes are from
a larger sample of data recorded
in a range of natural settings. The data to be exam
ined here are drawn
largely from a fam
ily dinner, a
backyard picnic, and a telephone call between tw
o college students. 2 Talk is
transcribed through use of the Jefferson transcription system (S
acks,S
chegloff and Jefferson 1974:731-733). The follow
ing are the featuresm
ost relevant to the present analysis:
-Italics indicate som
e form of em
phasis, which m
ay besignaled by changes in pitch and/or am
plitude.
- A
Left B
racket connecting talk on separate lines marks the point at
which one speaker's talk overlaps the talk of another.
-C
olons indicate that the sound just before the colon hasbeen noticeably lengthened.
- A
dash marks a sudden cut-off of the current sound.
- Intonation
: Punctuation symbols are used to m
ark
intonation changes rather than as gramm
atical symbols:
∞ A
period marks a falling contour.
∞ A
question mark indicates a raising
contour.∞
A com
ma indicates a falling-raising
contour.
-N
umbers in parentheses m
arks silences in seconds andtenths of second's.
-A
series of `h"s preceded by a dot marks an Inbreath.
-D
ouble parentheses enclose material that is not part of the
talk being transcribed, for example a com
ment by the transcriber if
the talk was spoken in som
e special way.
-A
degree sign ϒ ϒ indicates that the talk following it is
spoken with noticeably low
ered volume.
----------
2. For more detailed analysis of the data and the m
eans usedto obtain it see C
. Goodw
in (1981).
3 Assessm
ents
One activity that both speakers and
recipients perform w
ithin theturn at talk is evaluating in som
e fashion persons and events being
described
within their talk. T
he following provid
e examples of such
assessmen
ts: 3
(1) G. I 26:22:40
(2) 6.84:10:30
Eileen
:
Cu
rt:->
This guy had
, a beautiful, thirty two O
:lds.
In both cases speakers p
reface descrip
tive nouns w
ith the word
"beautifu
l" and thu
s evaluate the p
henomena referenced
by thosenou
ns (i.e., in #1 E
ileen assesses the "Irish Setter" she is talkingabout by d
escribing it as "beautiful").
The w
ord "assessm
ent" can in fact be used
to refer to a range ofevents that exist on analytically d
istinct levels of organization. Inview
of this some d
efinitional issues arise:
1.T
he term
can be u
sed to d
escribe a structu
ral un
it that
occurs at a sp
ecific place in
the stream
of speech
, forexam
ple the ad
jective "beautifu
l." For clarity this sense ofthe term
, which is u
sed to d
esignate a specific, segm
entalu
nit in the stream of sp
eech can be called an assessm
entsegm
ent. Though w
e will quickly see that not all assessm
ent
----------
3. For other relevant analysis of how assessm
ents are organizedw
ithin
conversation
see C. G
oodw
in (1986), M
.H. G
oodw
in(1980), and
Pomerantz (1978, 1984a).
signals are limited
to specific segm
ental phenom
ena in thisw
ay (and m
oreover that segments that p
recede the exp
licitassessm
ent term, for exam
ple intensifiers, m
ight also be part
of the activity of assessment), being able to talk abou
t anassessm
ent occu
rring at a p
articular p
lace offers greatad
vantages for startin
g analysis of th
e larger activity ofperform
ing assessments - e.g., once an assessm
ent segment is
located an analyst can look in d
etail at the different typ
es ofaction that not only co-occu
r with this event bu
t also preced
eand
follow it. M
oreover, particip
ants themselves attend
toth
e d
istinctiv
eness
and
salien
ce of
such
seg
men
talp
hen
omen
a; for examp
le they d
istingu
ish an
assessmen
tsegm
ent from events that p
recede it, and
treat it as a place
for
heig
hten
ed
mu
tual
orien
tation
an
d
action
(a
phenomenon to explored
is detail later in this paper).
2.In
ad
dition
to
usin
g p
hen
omen
a th
at can
be
neatly
segmen
ted in
the stream
of speech
, such
as assessmen
tad
jectives, particip
ants can also disp
lay their involvement in
an assessment thou
gh nonsegmental p
henomena su
ch asintonation, and
also through recognizable nonsocial d
isplays
(M.H
. Good
win 1980). Ind
eed it som
etimes becom
es quite
difficu
lt to
precisely
d
elimit
the
boun
daries
of an
assessment." A
s a function of langu
age (in the Pragu
e senseof th
at word
) rather th
an a sp
ecific act, the activity of
assessment is not lim
ited to w
ord or syntactic level objects,
but rather, like p
rosody in an u
tterance, runs over syntactic
units. In this sense it acts much like intonation (w
hich is
----------
4. Frequen
tly the left bou
nd
ary of an assessm
ent is esp
eciallyd
ifficult to p
recisely delim
it. Note, for exam
ple, not only the
analysis later in
this p
aper of h
ow p
articipan
ts attend
tointensifiers, etc. that p
recede assessm
ent segments as d
isplaying
emerging involvem
ent in the activity of assessment, bu
t also thew
ay in which p
rior talk can "seed" a su
bsequent assessm
ent byforesh
adow
ing
that
an
evalu
ation
is abou
t to
occur
(ap
hen
omen
on th
at is being in
vestigated in
work cu
rrently in
progress).
67
indeed one principal resource for displaying evaluation) 5 vis-a-vissegm
ental phonology. 6 A display show
ing a party's involvement in
an assessment can be called an assessm
ent signal. Assessm
entsegm
ents constitute a particular subset of assessment signals. It is
however quite relevant to distinguish assessm
ent segments from
the larger class of assessment signals since they have the special,
and quite useful, property of being precisely delimited in the
stream of speech.
3.T
he term "assessm
ent" can also be used to designate a particulartype of speech act. T
his sense of the term differs from
the first two
in that emphasis is placed on an action being perform
ed by anactor, rather than on the speech signal used to em
body that action,or the particular place w
here it occurs in the stream of speech. A
nassessm
ent in this sense of the term can be called an assessm
entaction.
----------
5. With respect to the close ties betw
een evaluation and intonation notethat P
ike, in his seminal study of E
nglish intonation (Pike 1945),
argued that the principal function of intonation was to show
the attitudeof the speaker tow
ard what he w
as saying. While such a view
of thefunction of intonation is clearly inadequate as a general analysis of thew
ork that intonation does, it does capture and highlight the way in
which intonation can tie together phenom
ena being talked about, with
the speaker's alignment to, and experience of, those phenom
ena. Suchanalysis
of the
way
in w
hich intonation
can display
speaker'sevaluation of the talk being produced is m
ost relevant to the structureand organization of assessm
ent actions.
6. In his analysis of narrative Labov (1972) classifies evaluation as one
distinct element of narrative structure, but also notes that unlike other
features of narrative which occur at specific places w
ithin the overallstructure of a narrative (for exam
ple the coda occurs at the end)evaluation can pervade the narrative. S
uch analysis supports theargum
ent about the distribution of assessment signals that is being
made here.
9
Several issues relevant to the analysis of assessments on this level
of organization can be briefly noted. First, w
hile most analysis of
speech acts
has focused
on actions
embodied
by com
pletesentences or turns, assessm
ents constitute a type of speech actthat can occur in the m
idst of an utterance. Subsequent analysisin this paper w
ill investigate some of the consequences of this.
Second, a crucial feature of assessment actions is the w
ay in which
they involve an actor taking up a position toward the phenom
enabeing assessed. For exam
ple in assessing something as "beautiful"
a party publicly comm
its themself to a particular evaluation of
what they have w
itnessed. By virtue of the public character of this
display others can judge the competence of the assessor to properly
evaluate the events they encounter (such a process is clearly centralto the interactive organization of culture), and assessors can be heldresponsible for the positions they state. T
hird, in so far asassessm
ents make visible an agent evaluating an event in his or her
phenomenal w
orld, they display that agent's experience of theevent, including their affective in
volvemen
t in the referent beingassessed. A
ffect displays are not only pervasive in the production ofassessm
ents, but also quite central to their organization. Moreover,
public structures such as this, that display the experience of oneparticipant, also provide resources for the interactive organizationof c
o-experience,
a process
that can
be accom
plished and
negotiated in fine detail within assessm
ents.
4.A
ssessment actions are produced by single individuals. H
owever
(as will be investigated in som
e detail in this paper) assessments
can be organized as an interactive activity that not only includesm
ultiple participants, but also encompasses types of action that are
not themselves assessm
ents. This can be called an assessm
entactivity.
Within
this activity
individuals not
only produce
assessment actions of their ow
n but also monitor the assessm
entrelevant actions of others (M
.H. G
oodwin 1980), and indeed
dynamically m
odify their own behavior in term
s of both
98
5.
what they see others are doing, and the recognizable structure of
the emerging assessm
ent activity itself (a topic to be explored indetail later in this paper).
Finally the w
ord assessable will be used to refer to the entity
being evaluated by an assessment.
In subsequent analysis the context in which the w
ord "assessment" is
being used will usually indicate w
hich of the several senses of the termnoted above is relevant at that point. T
herefore these distinctions will not
be marked in the text unless necessary.
4 Assessm
ents that Precede A
ssessables
What consequences does the fact that a speaker doesn't just describe
something, but also does an assessm
ent of it, have for how that tallk is to
be heard and dealt with by recipients? T
o start to investigate this issue we
will look at #1 in som
e detail. For com
pleteness a full transcript of thissequence w
ill now be provided. H
owever to m
ake the presentation of theanalysis as clear as possible sim
plified extracts from this transcript w
illthen bw
used to illustrate specific phenomena.
(1) G.126:22:40
4.1 Using an A
ssessment to Secure R
ecipient Co-P
articipation
Returning to the question of how
speaker's assessment m
ight beconsequential for recipients' action it can be noted that in #1 just after thenoun phrase containing the assessm
ent, one of Eileen's recipients, D
ebbie,responds to w
hat has just been said with an elaborated "A
h::".
(1) G.126:22:40
By placing an assessm
ent in her talk speaker secures an imm
ediatesubsequent assessm
ent from a recipient. M
oreover, though the way in
which she pronounces her "A
h: ::" Debbie coparticipates in the evaluative
loading of Eileen's talk, and indeed m
atches the affect display contained inE
ileen's assessment w
ith a reciprocal affect d
isplay. T
he talk marked
with the assessm
ent is thus not treated simply as a description, but rather
as something that can be responded to, and participated in, in a special
way.Further insight into w
hat this might m
ean from an organizational point
of view can be gained by exam
ining the sequential structure of this talkin m
ore detail. It can be noted, first, that recipient's action does not occurat the end of speaker's current turn-constructional unit, the characteristicplace for recipient response, but rather at a point w
here her currentsentence has recognizably not reached com
pletion. Structurally, the
1110
assessments of both speaker and recipient are placed in the m
idst of aturn-constructional unit. 7
4.2D
ifferential Treatment of Talk as it E
merges and W
hen itR
eaches Com
pletion
The issue arises as to w
hat relevance such sequential placement has for the
organization of action within the turn. For exam
ple does access to multiple
places to operate on the same strip of talk provide participants w
ithresources for the organization of their action that they w
ould not otherwise
have, and if so how do they m
ake use of these resources? One w
ay toinvestigate this issue is to look at how
this talk is treated when it does
eventually come to com
pletion. Looking again at the data it can be seen
that at its completion E
ileen's talk is not dealt with as an assessable but
rather as a laughable. Moreover such treatm
ent of this talk was in fact
projected for it before it began (arrows m
ark points of laughter in thepreface, clim
ax and response sequences):
----------
7. For more detailed analysis of how
assessments contrast w
ith continuersin term
s of their precise placement relative to the talk of another see C
.G
oodwin (1986).
13
Com
ponents of this sentence are thus dealt with In one w
ay as it emerges
through time, w
hile the sentence as a whole Is treated in a different fashion
when
it reaches
completion.
Schegloff
(1980) has
argued that
onesystem
atic issue posed for recipients of extended sequences of talk isw
hether to operate on a current piece of talk in its own right or treat it as a
preliminary to som
ething else. Here w
e find the participants able to dealw
ith a single piece of talk in both ways. B
y marking the description of the
dog as an assessable speaker was able to extract it from
its embedded
position within the story as a w
hole for treatment on its ow
n terms.
How
ever in that that description occurred at a point where speaker's
sentence was recognizably incom
plete, the not-yet-actualized tying of thistalk to relevant further talk. is also an operative feature of its structure, w
iththe effect that the larger sentence rem
ains something to be returned to after
the assessment activity has been brought to com
pletion. Within this single
utterance the participants are thus able to perform a range of
12
----------
different interactive activities, and deal with the talk that it contains in
distinctive, separable ways.
4.3 Pre-P
ositioned Assessm
ent Adjectives as G
uides for Hearers
Let us now
examine in m
ore detail the interactive organization of the nounphrase itself, the w
ay in which its com
ponents might be attended to as it
emerges
through tim
e. It
can be
observed that
within
it speaker's
assessment term
occurs in a particular position relative to the object beingassessed, i.e., it occurs before that object. T
hus by the time the object itself
emerges recipients have been alerted to hear it in a particular w
ay. The
issue arises as to whether recipients do in fact track the em
erging structureof a noun phrase on this level of detail. Is it the case that at the com
pletionof the w
ord "beautiful" a recipient will deal w
ith the next words to be
spoken in a different way than he w
ould have before hearing this term?
Features of these data not yet examined provide som
e evidence that indeedrecipients do deal w
ith the interactive import of em
erging talk on this levelof detail. Just after saying "beautiful" speaker hesitates. P
aul, the partyw
ho experienced with teller the events being described, appears to
interpret this hesitation as the beginning of a word search; just after it he
provides the projected next item in speaker's talk, the w
ords "Irish setter,"beginning an instant before speaker herself says this. H
owever, Paul does
not simply speak these w
ords; rather through his actions while speaking he
makes visible an alignm
ent tow
ard them that is congruent w
ith theassessm
ent just made by the speaker. H
is talk is produced in a lowered
"reverent" tone and while speaking Paul perform
s a prototypical nonvocalassessm
ent marker, a lateral head shake. 8 Indeed this action is escalated
during Debbie's receipt of the assessm
ent when he closes his eyes and
performs an even larger head shake over her "A
h:::,":
8. For m
ore detailed analysis of the way in w
hich such a headshake isused as an assessm
ent marker see M
.H. G
oodwin (1980).
Thus in the very next m
oment after E
ileen says "beautiful" Paul treats as anassessable w
hat is about to be described in the not-yet-completed noun
phrase. Moreover this m
arks a definite change in his alignment to that
phenomenon. W
hen, in asking Eileen to tell the story, he first m
adereference to "the dog" he did not orient to it as an assessable.
What happens here is also relevant to the analysis of affect as an
Interactive phenomenon. It w
as noted earlier that Debbie reciprocated the
affect display made available by E
ileen's assessment. W
e now find that
Paul does this as w
ell. Eileen's assessm
ent thus leads to a sequence ofaction in w
hich three separate parties coparticipate in the experienceoffered by the assessm
ent through an exchange of affect displays. These
data also demonstrate how
evaluative loading is not restricted to specificsegm
ents within the stream
of speech, but instead can accrue to a sequenceof rather heterogeneous phenom
ena (for example the noun "Irish S
etter"and the non-lexical "A
h:::") and can even bridge actions performed by
separate speakers (i.e., Paul's head
1415
shake encompasses not only the joint production of "Irish Setter" but also
Debbie's subsequent "A
h:::"). 9 In brief,
while
on the
one hand
assessments constitute a m
ode of interaction that can occur within
utterances, indeed within subcom
ponents of utterances, on the other handthey also provide an exam
ple of an activity structure that can seamlessly
span multiple utterances, and even utterance: by different speakers.
The follow
ing provides further information about how
the activity ofassessing w
hat is being said might provide organization for the interaction
of participants within relevant descriptive units, such as the utterance
manifestations of noun phases. H
ere, even though the original descriptionof the ice cream
is responded to as an assessable (lines 1 and 2), when
speaker, after describing the machine used to m
ake it, returns to the icecream
itself in line 9, recipient does not display any heightened alignment
to it. Speaker then interrupts the noun phrase in progress before it has
reached a recognizable completion and redoes it, only this tim
e placing thew
ord "homem
ade" before the type of ice cream. Just after this w
ord, overthe second production of "peach" recipient begins to treat the talk inprogress of as an assessable:
----------
9. For other analysis of actions spanning m
ultiple speakers see Ochs,
Schieffelin and Platt (1979).
The second version of "peach" is treated by recipient in a w
ay that the firstw
asn't, and this change in alignment appears to be responsive to the details
of the way in w
hich speaker organizes her emerging description. First, by
interrupting that talk before it has reached a point of recognizablecom
pletion speaker shows recipient that for som
e reason it is no longerappropriate for that talk to continue m
oving towards com
pletion. What
speaker does next, in part by virtue of its status as a repair of the talk justm
arked as flawed, provides som
e information about w
hat she found to beproblem
atic with the earlier talk. Insofar as the second version differs from
the first primarily through the addition of the w
ord "homem
ade" that termis m
arked as in some sense essential for proper understanding of the
description in progress. How
ever, recipient has already been told in line 1that the ice cream
was hom
emade. T
hus speaker is not telling recipientsom
ething new, but instead inform
ing her that something that she already
knows has not yet been taken proper account of. B
y taking up the same
alignment to this new
version of the description that she gave to its firstproduction in "hom
emade," speaker attends to the repair as having
precisely this import. In brief it w
ould appear that the problem being
remedied w
ith the repair lies not so much in the talk itself as in the w
ay inw
hich recipient is visibly dealing
1617
19
with it. M
oreover speaker is able not only to see this problem but to
initiate action leading to a remedy of it w
hile the description itself is stillin progress. S
uch events enable us to see in greater detail some of the
ways in w
hich concurrent operations on talk ate sustained and shown to be
relevant through an active processes of interaction between speaker and
recipient as the talk is being spoken.
5 Post-P
ositloned Assessm
ents
In the data so far examined the assessm
ent term and the phenom
enonbeing assessed have been packaged together w
ithin a single unit, forexam
ple within a single noun phrase. It is, how
ever, , possible to performthese activities separately. F
or example, in the follow
ing "asparagus pie"is introduced in a first sentence and then it is assessed in a second: 10
----------
10. Constructions such as this, in w
hich an entity is introduced in a firststructure, and then com
mented on in a second, have been the subject
of extensive analysis from a num
ber of different perspectives. Thus
linguists have studied such structures both in terms of syntactic
processes such as left dislocation (Gundel 1975; R
oss 1967), and interm
s of how topics, and com
ments on those topics, are organized w
ithrespect to the contrast betw
een "given" and "new" inform
ation (Chafe
1976; Li and T
hompson 1976). It should how
ever be noted that while
organizing information is a very im
portant aspect of the discourseorganization of such constructions, inform
ation managem
ent isnonetheless only one of a range of functions that such structures canperform
(Silverstein 1976). Thus, as w
ill be seen later in this paper, inm
any cases recipient collaborates in the assessment, operating on it
even before speaker has explicitly stated her position. In addition tom
arking the salience of different types of information, such a
structure thus invokes a framew
ork for
----------
heightened mutual focus on, and coparticipation in, the tal
containing the
assessment.
Though
the current
analysiem
phasizes the organization of participation structures, rather thathe transfer of inform
ation, it seems quite com
patible with th
emphasis in previous analysis on foregrounding the m
aterial in thcom
ment or proposition. R
ecently students of discourse (Duran
and Ochs 1979; O
chs and Schieffelin 1983a, 1983b) have begun t.investigate
the pragm
atic organization
of left-dislocation
examining phenom
ena such as how the `R
eferent + P
ropositionstructure can be used to organize and focus recipient's attentionthe w
ay in which such structures m
ight be fruitfully investigateas discourses (i.e., sequences of com
municative acts), rather tha
as single syntactically bound units (Ochs and S
chieffelin 1983aand
how,
as a
multi-purpose
gramm
atical construction
left-dislocation can be used to provide a warrant for a speaker
current claim to the floor (D
urand and Ochs 1979). S
uch pragm
atic focus
is quite
consistent w
ith the
analysis bein
developed here. The present data provide an opportunity to expan
the dimensions and fram
es of reference that have so far beeem
ployed to study structures of this type. On a m
ore general levew
e think that it is quite important that study of the functiona
organization of linguistic and discourse structure not be restricteto
issues of
information
managem
ent, but
also include
thm
ultifaceted activities, pragmatic functions and participatio
structures that are invoked through talk.
18
20Hare the assessm
ent occurs after the assessable has been made
available11 and is the only activity done in the speaker's second sentence.
The ability to perform
assessments in this fashion is useful to participants
in a number of different w
ays. For exam
ple, with such a structure
participants are able to assess phenomena that w
ould not fit neatly within
a single
unit. In
the follow
ing speaker
has provided
an extended
description of a movie she has seem
5.1P
ost-Positioned A
ssessments as Techniques for D
isplayingC
losure
A
first observation
that can
be m
ade about
such post-positioned
assessments is that, by m
oving to the assessment, speaker show
s thatthough her talk is continuing, a m
arked structural change has occurred init. L
ooking again at #5 it can be observed that when speaker begins the
assessment she is no longer describing events (here incidents in the
movie), but instead com
menting on the description already given:
The issue arises as to how
actions such as these are perceived,attended to and participated in by recipients.
----------
11. Where the assessm
ent occurs in the stream of speech relative to the
assessable is attended to in the fine detail within these utterances.
Thus in #l, in w
hich the assessment preceded the assessable, the
clause containing the assessment w
as introduced with "this" (i.e.,
"this beautiful Irish Setter"), which established its upcom
ing referentas an available object for com
mentary, w
hile in #4 the anaphoric term"it" presupposes the prior establishm
ent of the referent as availablew
ithin the discourse.
Such a shift from
Description to A
ssessment of D
escribed Events in fact
constitutes one of the characteristic ways that speakers begin to exit from
astory. H
ere Hyla does not end her story but instead begins to tell N
ancym
ore about what happened in the m
ovie. How
ever the way in w
hich sheresum
es the telling in fact supports the possibility that participants doattend to assessm
ents as marking a m
ove toward closure. A
fter Nancy
produces her own assessm
ent Hyla does not, as she had after earlier
continuers and brief assessments, produce a next event in the story. Instead
she follows recipient's assessm
ent with another one of her ow
n. Hyla then
interrupts this assessment before it reaches com
pletion and marks her
return to the description of the movie w
ith a misplacem
ent marker, "oh."
12
Thus the resum
ption of the telling
----------
12. See H
eritage (1984b) for more detailed analysis of how
the particle`oh' functions w
ithin interaction.
21
2223
is shown to be a m
isplaced activity, rather than one that would follow
unproblematically from
the assessment activity then being engaged in.
6 Perform
ing an Assessm
ent as a Structured Interactive Activity
Looking
now
at the
structure of
the sentences
used to
constructpost-positioned assessm
ents in #4 and #5, it can be noted that despitedifferences
in the
words
used a
similar
format
is found
in both
assessments:
[it] + [copula] + [adverbial intensifier] + [assessment term
]
A first observation that can be m
ade about this format is that it seem
sto reflect a division of activity w
ithin the utterance, with the first part of
the sentence being occupied with referencing the assessable and the
second, specifically the material after the verb, w
ith the activity ofassessm
ent itself. Moreover the w
ay in which each utterance is spoken is
consistent with such a possibility. In both cases the speech quality of the
assessment term
itself is heightened through noticeable lengthening ofsounds w
ithin it. Such enhancement of the talk is absent from
the first partof the utterance but begins to em
erge at the beginning of the adverbialintensifier, w
hich in both cases receives additional stress in addition tolengthening of sounds w
ithin it. In brief both the semantic organization of
these sentences, and the way in w
hich they are spoken, seem to reveal a
movem
ent toward heightened participation in the activity of assessing by
speaker, as the sentence unfolds.
Looking at these data from
a slightly different perspective it can alsobe noted that speaker's heightened participation in the activity ofassessm
ent begins before the assessment term
itself,
with the intensifier .13 E
arlier it was seen that im
mediately upon the
occurrence of an assessment adjective recipients could begin to treat the
talk to follow as an assessm
ent. This raises the possibility that by attending
to the pre-positioned intensifier recipients of sentences of the type nowbeing exam
ined might be able to align them
selves to the emerging talk as
an assessment before the assessm
ent term itself is actually produced.
Indeed when the actions of hearers to these utterances are exam
ined it isfound that
----------
13. The intensifier is clearly part of the assessm
ent activity and it would
be wrong to suggest that the assessm
ent does not begin until theadjective explicitly states an evaluation. It is how
ever quite useful todistinguish the intensifier from
the assessment adjective in order to
demonstrate how
participants collaboratively work tow
ard achievingheightened
mutual
focus over
the assessm
ent adjective.
The
distinctions at the beginning of the paper between a
ssessmen
tsegm
ents and assessment activity w
ere drawn precisely to deal w
ithsituations such as this. T
he intensifier is an assessment segm
ent in itsow
n right,
but one
that can
be clearly
distinguished from
the
assessment adjective that follow
s it.
24
in both cases recipients start to produce an assessment of their ow
n just asthe intensifier com
es to completion:
Thus at the point w
here speaker actually produces her assessment term
recipient is simultaneously providing her ow
n assessment of the sam
em
aterial. Such activity has a num
ber of consequences for the presentanalysis. First, it provides a clear dem
onstration of how the production of
an assessment can constitute a social activity involving the collaborative
action of multiple participants. Second, the placem
ent of recipient's actionsupports the possibility that she is tracking in rather fine detail both theem
erging structure of speaker's sentence, and the activity that speaker isprogressively entering. It w
ould thus appear that subcomponents of
speaker's utterance, such as the intensifier, as well as the details of its
sound production, contribute to the interactive organization of the actionsof speaker and hearer in the activity they are jointly engaged in. In thissense the em
erging structure of speaker's utterance, and the details of thew
ay in which it is spoken, constitute one aspect of the context that
recipients are actively attending to within the turn as consequential for the
organization of their own actions. M
oreover that context, and the utteranceitself,
are intrinsically
dynamic,
and are
attended to
as such
byparticipants.
By
making
projections about
the future
course of
anutterance, recipients dem
onstrate that they are not dealing with it as a
monolithic w
hole, or simply as a static string of sym
bolic components tied
together through
25
syntax, but rather as a process that emerges through tim
e and carries with It
an expanding horizon of projective possibilities that are relevant to theactions that recipient m
ight engage in while acting as a hearer to the
utterance. 14
6.1 Extended O
verlap
The assessm
ents produced by recipients in these data take the form of
complete substantial sentences in their ow
n right. In that they are placednot after speaker's action has com
e to completion, but w
hile speaker'sassessm
ent is also in progress a state of extended simultaneous talk by
different participants results (i.e., in length and structure something m
orethan overlap of ongoing talk by continuers or brief assessm
ent tokens suchas "oh w
ow".) 15
----------
14. For other analysis of how the w
ay in which recipient projections about
the future course of a sentence are relevant to the organization of theirinteraction w
ith speaker see Jefferson (1973) and Sacks, Schegloff andJefferson (1974). F
or analysis of how deictic term
s dynamically
modify em
erging context as an utterance unfolds see Hanks (1986).
15. For m
ore detailed analysis of the interactive organization of briefassessm
ents such as "oh wow
", and the way in w
hich they contrastw
ith continuers such as "uh huh" see C. G
oodwin (1986). A
ssessments
by recipient can range from fully referential and predicational ones
down to relatively desem
anticized displays of empathy, etc., that lack
an explicit
referent and
evaluation, but
do display
affectiveinvolvem
ent in principal speaker's statement. Indeed som
e evidencesuggests that this division of labor, w
ith principal speaker providingthe referent that recipient is responding to, m
ay be attended to in finedetail in the sequential organization of concurrent assessm
ents. Thus,
when recipients produce brief concurrent assessm
ents, speakers may
delay entry into subsequent units of talk until the assessment has run
its course, so that the a new
26
This is not, how
ever, treated as a situation requiring a remedy; 16 for
example,
neither party's
talk contains
restarts, hitches,
or other
perturbations, or indeed any displays that problems exist w
ith the currentstate of talk. M
oreover, if the analysis developed above is correct, thissim
ultaneous talk is not the result of an accidental failure to achieve propercoordination but rather som
ething that the participants have systematically
achieved through close attention to the emerging structure of the talk and
activity in progress. What happens here thus provides further support for
the possibility that assessments do indeed constitute w
ays of analyzing andoperating on talk that can be perform
ed while that talk is still in progress.
Indeed it appears that constraints which elsew
here exert quite powerful
influence on the sequential organization of talk, for example an orientation
to one but only one party speaking at a time, can be relaxed for
assessments. It w
ould thus appear that, in a number of different w
ays, theactivity of assessing som
ething provides participants with resources for
performing concurrent operations on talk that has not yet com
e tocom
pletion.
6.2D
ifferential Access as an O
rganizing Feature of C
oncurrentA
ssessments
Though the talk of both speaker and recipient in #4 and #5 is assessing the
same m
aterial each party in fact says rather different things. Is suchvariation sim
ply haphazard or does it reveal further aspects of thephenom
ena the participants are orienting to as relevant for the organizationof their activity? L
ooking more carefully at precisely w
hat is said it can benoted that in its details the talk of each party attends to the access each hasto the phenom
ena being assessed. For example, H
yla with her initial
----------
referent does not occur while the assessm
ent is still in progress (C.
Goodw
in 1986).
16. For analysis of how
participants can negotiate speakership within
overlap see Jefferson (1973) and Schegloff (in press).
27
"it's" makes reference to an actual m
ovie she has seen, and assesses it inunequivocal term
s. Nancy, how
ever, by saying "That sounds so: goo::d?"
attends to what she is assessing as being available only through H
yla'scurrent description of it. S
imilarly in #4 D
ianne, who depicts herself as
having directly experienced in the past the pie she is now describing, m
akesreference to that specific pie. H
owever, C
lacia, by putting her assessment in
present tense, deals not with the specifics of that particular pie, but rather
with it as a class of phenom
ena that the pie currently being describedinstances. A
mom
ent later, after Dianne has described the pie in m
ore detail,C
lacia says "Oh: G
o: d that'd be fantastic." Here by constructing her
assessment in conditional tense, she again m
akes visible in her talk thelim
ited access17 she has to the phenom
ena she is assessing. Thus one of the
reasons that the assessments of the separate participants differ from
eachother is that each has different access to and experience of the event beingassessed. T
his feature provides organization for a range of phenomena
implicated in the construction of each utterance, such as the choice of
particular words and verb tenses. B
y constructing their assessments in this
fashion participants also attend in detail to how they have been organized
relative to each other by the telling in progress. For exam
ple the differentpositions of describer and describee are show
n to remain relevant even
when both are assessing in a sim
ilar fashion the events which have been
described. In brief, despite their apparent simplicity, assessm
ents show a
view of the assessable as som
ething perceived by an actor who both takes
up a particular alignment to it and sees the assessable from
a particularperspective, one that m
ay be quite different from that of a coparticipant w
hois sim
ultaneously assessing the same event.
It can also be noted that insofar as both the assessable, and the activityof assessing it, em
erge as talk unfolds through time,
----------
17. For other analysis of how the structure of talk displays the type of
knowledge that speaker has of the event being talked about see M
.H.
Goodw
in (1980), Hanks (1986) and Pom
erantz (1980).
28
differences in participant perspective have a temporal organization as
well. T
o note one simple exam
ple, in #1 Paul, the party w
ho saw w
ithspeaker
the dog
being assessed,
was
able to
act just
after the
pre-positioned assessment adjective w
as spoken. How
ever at that pointthe assessable itself w
as not yet available to speaker's addressed recipient,D
ebbie, and indeed her response occurred only after the assessable hadbeen described. Issues of em
erging perspective within the activity of
assessing are clearly relevant to other processes as well, such as w
ays inw
hich recipients project from an intensifier that an assessm
ent is about tooccur.
6.3 Making V
isible Congruent U
nderstanding
Though the talk of the separate parties show
s that each is viewing the
assessable from a different perspective, in other w
ays the assessments
produced by each seem to have an underlying sim
ilarity. For example in
#4 both speaker and recipient assess asparagus pie positively. Thus w
iththeir assessm
ents the participants are able to display to each other thatthey evaluate the phenom
ena being assessed in a similar w
ay. Moreover
by virtue of the way in w
hich each assessment takes into account the
distinctive position of the party making it, these sim
ilar evaluation: areshow
n to result from independent appraisals of the phenom
ena beingassessed. In essence w
ith the assessments the participants show
each otherthat, on this issue at least, their m
inds are together, they evaluate thephenom
ena being discussed is a similar w
ay.
Assessm
ent: reveal not just neutral objects In the world, but an
alignment taken up tow
ard phenomena by a particular actor. M
oreoverthis alignm
ent can be of some m
oment in revealing such significant
attributes of the actor as their taste, and the way in w
hich they evaluatethe phenom
ena they perceive. It is therefore not surprising that displayingcongruent understanding can be an
29
issue of some im
portance to the participants. 18 Further support for activeattention to such an issue is found w
hen a visual record of the actions ofthe participants in #4 is exam
ined. As C
lacia produces her assessment she
nods toward D
ianne:
With her nods C
lacia proposes that the talk she is producing, and theposition taken up through that talk, is in agreem
ent with D
ianne's. Indeed,taken as a w
hole the actions she performs here provide a strong display of
agreement. First, w
ith the content of her utterance she states a view of the
assessable that is compatible w
ith Dianne's. S
econd, with her nods she
marks that talk nonvocally as an agreem
ent. Third, she perform
s this actionnot after hearing D
ianne's assessment but at the very m
oment it is being
spoken. It is of course true that the talk so far produced provides materials
(for example the intensifier) that strongly suggest, and perhaps actually
project, a favorable assessment. N
evertheless at the point where C
laciaacts, D
ianne has not officially stated a position. By placing her talk w
hereshe does C
lacia argues that her way of view
ing the assessable is so attunedto D
ianne's that she is prepared to both comm
it herself to a position, andcategorize that position as an agreem
ent without
----------
18. For other analysis of displaying congruent understanding see C
.G
oodwin (1981:114-116) and Jefferson (1983).
3130 .
actually hearing Dianne's. 19 T
hus with the content of her talk, nonvocal
displays about it, and its sequential placement, C
lacia argues strongly thather view
of the assessable is congruent with D
ianne's.
It is being argued that recipients produce concurrent assessments by
making projections about events w
hich have not yet occurred. If this isindeed the case then it w
ould be expected that on some occasions the
projections made by recipients w
ould turn out to be inaccurate. Rather than
providing evidence against the position being argued in this paper, such anevent w
ould constitute strong evidence that recipients are in fact engagedin the activity of anticipating future events on the basis of the lim
itedInform
ation currently available to them. T
he following provides an
example of how
a recipient's projection of an emerging assessm
ent can beerroneous, w
ith the effect that the concurrent appreciation being displayedby recipient is quite inappropriate to w
hat speaker turns out to in fact besaying:
----------
19. It may be noted that the placem
ent of this strong agreement is alm
ostthe m
irror image of one of the w
ays in which im
pending disagreement
is displayed sequentially. Pomerantz (1984a) describes how
recipientsprepared to disagree frequently delay a response to w
hat has just beensaid.
In the beginning of this sequence Em
ma describes a "D
AR
LIN
G D
RE
SS"that she has m
ade and Nancy replies to her description w
ith concurrentassessm
ents in lines 5, 13 and 20. In lines 19 and 21 Em
ma starts to m
ovetow
ard a recognizable assessment, follow
ing `was' w
ith the intensifier 'so'.R
ight after this happens Nancy in line 22 starts to coparticipate in the
assessment by producing an elaborated, appreciative "A
h : : : : : :". The
positive affect displayed by Nancy is quite congruent w
ith the favorablew
ay that the dress has been described in the sequence until this point.H
owever it turns out that E
mm
a is now m
oving her talk to a negativedescription of the w
eather on her trip, i.e. it "wz so h
o:t there" that theydidn't even stay for dinner. B
y relying on cues of the type being analyzed inthe present paper N
ancy has attempted to align herself to an assessm
entbefore it is
32
actually produced, but the talk has progressed in ways quite incom
patiblew
ith her
projection of
it, w
ith the
effect that
she is
respondinginappropriately to w
hat Em
ma is saying. S
uch data provide a strongdem
onstration of how projecting w
hat another is about to say so as toconcurrently coparticipate in it constitutes a contingent accom
plishment.
Fortunately the em
erging structure of interaction provides resources form
oving past, and attempting to recover from
, such a faux pas, and in line33 w
e find Nancy once again producing a concurrent assessm
ent toE
mm
a's description of the weather, only this tim
e her response is quiteappropriate.
Returning now
to example #4 w
e find that Dianne also perform
s anum
ber of relevant nonvocal actions. As she produces the assessm
entterm
she lowers her head into a nod w
hile simultaneously lifting her
brows into a m
arked eyebrow flash. T
hese actions are preceded bym
ovement of her head and upper body in a w
ay that shows heightened
orientation toward recipient over the intensifier:
Dianne's nonvocal behavior like her talk seem
s to display aprogression tow
ard heightened involvement in the assessm
ent as
33
her utterance unfolds. 20 These actions becom
e most intense over the
assessment term
itself, and indeed at this point in the talk quite a range ofboth vocal and nonvocal action is occurring. T
he ensemble of things done
over the assessment does not, how
ever, seem a collection of separate
actions, but rather integrated elements of a single interactive activity of
assessment. M
oreover the visible behavior of speaker, as well as the
unfolding structure of her talk and recipient's participation in that talk,seem
to demonstrate system
atic movem
ent toward this point through tim
e.In essence one seem
s to find here an organized activity that participantsrecognize and system
atically bring to a recognizable climax.
6.4 Bringing A
ssessment A
ctivity to a Close
Having seen how
participants attend to the structure of assessments as an
activity so as to collaboratively bring that activity to a recognizable peak orclim
ax, we w
ill now look at som
e of the ways in w
hich movem
ent away
from such a point m
ight be accomplished. O
ne way to approach this issue
is to
ask "W
hat can
participants do
next?" S
ome
actions w
ithinconversation have the property of being nonrepeatable (see for exam
ple theanalysis of sum
mons-answ
er sequences in Schegloff (1968)), i.e.,
----------
20. In that recipient's nod begin after speaker's body displays heightenedorientation tow
ard her over the intensifier, one might be tem
pted toargue that the nods are solicited or at least triggered by the bodym
ovement speaker has just m
ade. How
ever it seems m
ore accurate tosay that recipient is responding to the em
erging activity of assessment,
something visible in a range of different w
ays, e.g., the intensifieritself, its placem
ent in the talk so far produced, the way in w
hich it isarticulated, the visible actions of speaker's body relevant to it, etc.A
rbitrarily segregating interactive events in terms of w
hether they areproduced vocally or nonvocally seem
s neither helpful analytically, norto accurately reflect w
hat the participants are doing.
once they have been validly performed they cannot be im
mediately
redone. Assessm
ents, however, are repeatable. M
oreover while som
erepeatable actions are used to progressively operate on new
material, for
example a series of questions in a m
edical interview, so that each instance
of a similar action actually deals w
ith separate phenomena, a participant
can make continuing assessm
ents of the same assessable. F
or example
after producing "Irish setter" as an assessment P
aul continues to displayinvolvem
ent in the activity of appreciating it. First, he coparticipates in theassessm
ent made by D
ebbie's "Ah:::," by producing an assessm
ent headshake in tim
e with it. T
hen, as his eyes return to Debbie, he uses an
assessment form
at similar to that found in #4 and #5 to extract the
assessment from
the embedded
3435
position it occupies in Eileen's sentence, and m
ake it the exclusive focus ofa new
sentence of his own:
Paul's utterance is also accompanied by assessm
ent head shakes. Thus as
Eileen returns to the substance of her story Paul m
akes
36
use of both vocal and nonvocal phenomena to produce repeated
assessments of the assessable. 21
----------
21. Paul's continued assessm
ents co-occur with E
ileen's return to herstory.
Itcan be noted that P
aul's talk is produced with noticeably low
eredvolum
e and that he does not orient toward the sam
e recipients Eileen
is then gazing at. He thus seem
s to produce minim
al intrusion intoE
ileen's talk. For exam
ple with the contrast in volum
e between his
talk and Eileen's he show
s others present that though that talkoverlaps E
ileen's, it should not be heard as competitive w
ith hers, andindeed
she does
not treat
it this
way.
Moreover,
even w
hilecontinuing in the assessm
ent, Paul seem
s to remain aw
are of theem
erging structure of Eileen's talk, and to organize at least som
efeatures of his actions in term
s of it. For example as she com
es to thecom
pletion of the background material in her story he brings his
assessment activity to a close and returns his gaze to her as the clim
axsegm
ent of the story is entered (for more detailed analysis of how
participants might attend to the em
erging structure of a story toorganize even actions unrelated to the story see C
. Goodw
in (1984)).Finally, it can be noted that insofar as Paul actually participated in theevents being described by E
ileen the issue arises as to how he can act
as a recipient to her current talk (for more detailed consideration of
this issue, and the interaction it engenders, see Sacks 10/19/71 and C.
Goodw
in (1981, chapter 5). By perform
ing the extended assessment
Paul finds a way to deal w
ith the events being described in the currenttalk in a w
ay that is appropriate to his experience of them.
37
Returning to #4 it is found that just after the assessm
ent producedconcurrently w
ith Dianne's, C
lacia repeats that assessment:
How
ever during this second assessment she acts quite differently than
she had during the first. Thus the subsequent assessm
ent is spoken with
markedly low
ered volume (this is indicated in the transcript by the sm
allertype). M
oreover while speaking C
lacia actually withdraw
s from her
coparticipant.
Thus, w
hile the initial concurrent assessment w
as produced within a state
of heightened orientation toward coparticipant and the talk in progress, this
second assessm
ent is
done w
hile C
lacia is
displaying dim
inishedparticipation in the activity, and indeed seem
s to be withdraw
ing from it
It is thus found that a single assessm
ent activity can
encom
pass a
range of different types of participation. The sequencing of participation
in these data — collaborative orientation tow
ard the emergence of the
assessment, elaborated participation in it as it is actually produced and
finally a trailing off of involvement in it —
is consistent with the possibility
that
38
what is occurring here are successive stages of a single natural activity
that emerges, com
es to a climax and is then w
ithdrawn from
.
6.5 Assessm
ents as Resources for C
losing Topics
Instead of
just analyzing
these different
participation structures
assuccessive stages of an unfolding activity it is also useful to exam
ine inm
ore detail how the possibility of investing assessm
ents with different
kinds of participation might provide participants w
ith resources for theorganization of their activity. F
or example, assessm
ents are one of thecharacteristic activities used to exit from
larger sequential units in talk suchas stories and topics. Indeed one frequently finds strings of assessm
ents atsuch places. W
hen one examines precisely how
such assessments are
spoken it is found that frequently they are operating not only to exit fromw
hat was being talked about in the story to topic, but that in addition the
different participation
possibilities provided
by assessm
ents are
systematically being used to bring the heightened m
utual orientation thatsuch a focused activity has engendered to a close. A
simple exam
ple isfound shortly after the sequences analyzed in #4. In the intervening talkD
ianne has described in greater detail the asparagus pie that Jeff made:
39
As D
ianne moves from
a description of the pie to an assessment of it,
she noticeably reduces the volume of her talk w
hile simultaneously
withdraw
ing her gaze from C
lacia. Thus she has not only m
oved into adifferent kind of talk (e.g. from
description to assessment) but also
changed the nature of her involvement in that talk and the structure of her
orientation to coparticipant. Despite the apparent sim
plicity of what
Dianne has done, the changes produced are in fact rather intricate. T
hussom
e of what happens —
the move from
description to assessment, the
reduction in volume and the w
ithdrawal of gaze from
recipient — indicate
that she is proposing topic closure. How
ever even as she does this she isdisplaying heightened involvem
ent in the substance of her talk. The
assessment itself w
ith its "savoring" voice quality (achieved in partthrough the sam
e lowering of volum
e that might otherw
ise indicate move
toward closure of the sequence) and actions of her body during it, such as
the assessment head shakes, all display elaborated appreciation of w
hatshe has been talking about. In essence the actions D
ianne performs seem
both to foreshadow topic closure and to show
heightened involvement in
the topic.A
t first glance such a combination m
ight appear inconsistent or evencontradictory. H
owever to see this m
ixture of phenomena in
40
such a way is to im
plicitly assume that topics run out only because
participants lose interest in them. If a topic has in fact engrossed the
attention of those talking, this would be a very poor w
ay to end it. On the
other hand, one would not w
ant to talk about that topic forever. Thus one
might w
ant to look for ways of dealing w
ith talk in progress that showheightened appreciation of it, w
ithout however proposing that others need
continue talking about it forever. Dianne's assessm
ent has precisely theseproperties. S
he is able to show coparticipant (for exam
ple with her gaze
withdraw
al) that
she is
not aw
aiting further
talk from
her,
while
simultaneously appreciating w
hat has just been said. Indeed one of thereasons w
hy assessments m
ight be so extensively used to close stories andtopics is that they provide this m
ixture of participation possibilities fororganizing the interaction then in progress.
Some dem
onstration that the participants themselves m
ight analyze anassessm
ent such as Dianne's as including an ensem
ble of activity of thetype just described is provided by the talk C
lacia produces next. In itsproductional features this talk responds to the various elem
ents of Dianne's
talk, while ratifying the change in participation status she has proposed:
First, as C
lacia begins to speak she too withdraw
s her gaze from her
coparticipant. Second, her talk is produced w
ith not simply low
eredvolum
e but drastically reduced volume (indicated in the transcript by the
two degree signs before it.) T
he talk itself is, however. a m
arked upgradeof the assessm
ent Dianne just m
ade:
41
The exchange of affect provided by the exchange of assessm
ents givesthe w
ithdrawal the intim
acy of a parting touch, in which the character of
the apparent referent of the assessment becom
es far less important than the
shared affect and coexperience the participants display to each other. Inthese data speaker and recipient, through the details of the w
ays in which
they performed their assessm
ents, have moved aw
ay from the substance of
the topic
in progress
while
simultaneously
showing
their ongoing
appreciation of it. At the sam
e time they have dism
antled the facingform
ation that had been sustained through that talk. Insofar as no new topic
is yet on the floor, the state of disengagement w
hich has thus beencollaboratively entered
42
through this process of phased withdraw
al 22 is quite appropriate to theircurrent actions.
7 Refusal by R
ecipient to Coparticipate in the A
ssessment
In the data so far examined recipients have accepted speaker's proposals
about how the entity being assessed should be evaluated. H
owever not all
assessments are responded to in such a felicitous fashion. R
ecipients canrefuse to treat as an assessable som
ething that speaker proposes should beso treated, and in so doing call into question a speaker's com
petence toproperly evaluate the phenom
enon being assessed. Exam
ple #2, which has
not yet been examined in detail, provides data in w
hich this happens. By
looking at it we w
ill be able to investigate some of the consequences that
producing something as an assessable has for both the party m
aking theassessm
ent, and the talk in progress.T
his utterance was produced as speaker w
as beginning an extendedstory. In form
it is quite similar to # 1:
With the w
ord "beautiful" speaker marks the talk to follow
as a descriptionof an assessable. Indeed both the w
ord "beautiful" and the talk after it aregiven special salience through the com
ma intonation around "beautiful."
Moreover this talk is accom
panied by relevant nonvocal actions, includinggestural intensifiers and head m
ovements by speaker, that seem
to bothenhance
the assessable
character of
his talk
and invite
recipientparticipation in
----------
22. For m
ore extended analysis of the organization of engagement
displays and entry into disengagement see C
. Goodw
in (1981, chapter3).
43
it (for purposes of the present analysis it is not necessary to examine these
actions in detail).It w
as seen in the data examined earlier that after hearing an assessable
recipients are not only able to respond to such action but participate in it ina variety of different w
ays. Indeed less than two m
inutes earlier in thissam
e conversation Mike produced a description of a car that C
urt assessedin rather elaborate fashion:
How
ever, in #2, despite the explicit assessment term
before Curt's
description of the "thirty two O
:lds", and the intonational and nonvocalem
phasis given it, Mike does not respond to w
hat Curt has said in any
way. A
fter leaving a full half second of silence that not only provides Mike
time for response, 23 but also m
akes
----------
23. For m
ore extended analysis of how speakers analyze the absence of
response to their talk and use further talk to pursue such response seePom
erantz (1984b).
44
visible interactively the absence of such a response, Curt produces further
talk:
By providing further inform
ation about the car being described Curt show
sthat he is still aw
aiting a response to his earlier talk. Moreover the w
ordchosen
Is inform
ative about
the type
of response
he is seeking.
Specifically this term provides recipient w
ith further grounds for treatingw
hat has just been described as something to be assessed. Indeed
"original" was the very first attribute used by C
urt to assess the Cords tw
om
inutes earlier (c.f. #8).A
t this point Mike does provide a response:
Mike's nod receipts C
urt's talk but in no way assesses it. R
ather the nodseem
s to constitute a type of continuer, an action which deals w
ith the talkw
hich has just been heard as preliminary to further talk, rather than as
something to be appreciated in its ow
n right (C. G
oodwin 1986; Schegloff
1980). Insofar as Curt's talk is recognizably one of the early stages of a
story it is technically possible to analyze it in this way. H
owever, as #1
demonstrated, it is also possible to deal w
ith such talk in its own term
s,and indeed C
urt hiss formulated this description as an assessm
ent, anaction recipients can and do participate in. T
hus by responding in the way
that he does Mike show
s that he has dealt with w
hat Curt has said, w
ithouthow
ever treating it in the way that C
urt proposed it
45
should be treated. Rather by responding w
ith a continuer Mike has m
ade acounterproposal - that C
urt should move forw
ard with the story.
Such a sequence of action makes it relevant to exam
ine what
happens next. After M
ike's action Curt produces further description of the
car, and then reveals this to be not a next event in the story but additionaldem
onstration of how "original" the car w
as. When this assessm
entextends into yet another turn constructional unit M
ike turns away from
Curt and begins to search for a cigarette.
Mike does not return his gaze to C
urt for over 33 seconds, moving back
into orientation toward him
at the point where the story approaches its
climax.
These data provide som
e demonstration of how
establishing theassessable character of an object is not som
ething done by speaker alone,but rather an interactive event. T
he participation possibilities provided byassessm
ents enable participants to negotiate both the status of a proposedassessable, and the w
ay in which the talk containing it w
ill be attended to.
46
8 Assessing P
henomena E
xperienced Only T
hrough Talk
One m
ight wonder how
Mike, or any recipient w
ho hasn't actually himself
experienced the assessable being described, could be expected to evaluateit. Q
uite clearly, as the data examined earlier in this paper dem
onstrate,recipients do assess phenom
ena available to them only through a speaker's
talk. What is involved in such a process? S
ome issues relevant to this
question will be briefly noted. First, as has already been seen, recipients do
organize their assessment w
ith attention to ways in w
hich their access tothe assessable differs from
speaker's. Second, recipients m
ay choose totrust the com
petence of speaker to properly evaluate what she is treating as
an assessable. Third, it w
ould appear that the assessable character of atleast som
e phenomena can be adequately established entirely through an
appropriate description of them. F
or example neither "hom
emade ice
cream" nor "C
ord" is preceded by an explicit assessment term
(such as"beautiful”) but recipients receipt both w
ith assessments. T
his suggeststhat independent of the specifics of the particular entity being described,its m
embership in the classes of phenom
ena identified by those terms is
itself adequate grounds for finding it to be an assessable. As C
urt sayselsew
here "Any C
ord is nice."
47
to be taken for granted, but rather something to be interactively achieved.
Indeed it would appear that m
aking such assessments Is one of the
places where a participant's fine grained com
petence In a particulardom
ain of culture is not only displayed to coparticipants but challenged orvalidated by them
. Thus in these data w
e find that Mike is som
eone who
will refuse to give a "thirty tw
o O:lds" the kind of evaluation that C
urtw
ould give both it and a "Cord." Indeed, unlike C
urt, Mike is som
eonew
ho makes distinctions betw
een Cords. In essence it w
ould appear thatw
hat is at issue in showing com
petence in making such distinctions is not
simply a cognitive phenom
enon (though the processes involved may be
central to the construction and operation of "domains of know
ledge" thatanthropologists and other students of the cognitive organization of culturehave studied as static phenom
ena, and analyzed in isolation from the
detailed interaction within w
hich they become visible) but a social and
interactive process, and indeed one that can have real consequences forthe standing participants achieve vis-à-vis one another.
Looking back at #1 in light of these considerations it can be seen that
in unproblematically accepting E
ileen's assessment as som
ething that shew
ill participate in, Debbie validates E
ileen's competence to properly
evaluate the phenomena she encounters. T
hough this might seem
sounrem
arkable as to escape notice, it is quite a bit more than M
ike givesC
urt.
9 Initial Alignm
ent and Subsequent Understanding
Do any system
atic reasons exist for Curt to pursue his assessm
ents of thecar w
ith such tenacity? Curt's activity of assessing the car occurs in a
particular sequential position, in an initial "background" segment of a m
oreextended story. In #1 it w
as seen that assessments m
ade in this positionm
ight treat phenomena quite differently from
the way in w
hich they aredealt w
ith later in the story. This does not how
ever exclude the possibilitythat on
How
ever, as Curt finds out w
hen he offers a "thirty two O
lds" as is itselfan assessable, the status of any particular descriptor is not
48
some occasions assessm
ents performed on phenom
ena in such a positionm
ight nonetheless also be relevant to the larger organizational structure ofthe em
erging story. Indeed attending to the kind of work that assessm
entscould do here w
ould help us to uncover in more detail the range of
activities that participants are engaged in while attending the initiation of a
story. In Curt's story it is eventually revealed that the ex-w
ife of the owner
of this car caused its engine to blow up by stuffing a rag in its radiator
hose. After the story reaches its clim
ax the participants deal with it by
debating what w
ould be proper punishment for the ex-w
ife -- the mildest
(and only printable) suggestion being Curt's "I'd kill y'know
that'd beenough t'go after a shotgun w
ith." Quite clearly punishm
ent like thisw
ould not be appropriate for someone w
ho damaged the engine of just any
car. Rather to understand the events in the story in the w
ay thatparticipants show
that they understood them, one m
ust conceptualize thecar as an extrem
ely special, very highly valued object, one whose
destruction merits extraordinary punishm
ent. Thus, w
hen Curt introduces
the car early in the story he is faced with the task of aligning his recipients
to it in a particular way. A
process well suited to not only displaying
alignment, but securing it from
others, is the activity of assessments.
When used to introduce entities that w
ill figure prominently in a story a
noun phrase containing an assessment adjective, such as "a beautiful thirty
two O
:Ids", contains within its structure elem
ents capable of performing
two of the central tasks posed during story initiation: m
aking phenomena
available for subsequent reference24 and aligning participants to those
phenomena in an appropriate fashion. F
rom such a perspective C
urt'sattem
pt to have the car evaluated in a particular way w
ould appear to beneither idiosyncratic, nor sim
ply an attempt to rem
edy an affront to hisjudgm
ent, but rather a systematic part of the w
ork he is faced with in
beginning a story: preparing his
----------
24. For more extensive consideration of how
this issue is relevant to theorganization of stories and other m
ulti-unit turns see Schegloff
(1980:114-115).
49
recipients to understand what he is to tell them
in an appropriate way, or
at least the way that he w
ants them to understand it.
Assessm
ents are found to occur in a diverse range of sequentialpositions w
ithin talk, for example, as subordinate parts of sentences
dealing primarily w
ith other matters, in the background segm
ents ofstories, and as extended sequences w
hen stories and topics are brought tocom
pletion. The phenom
ena just noted would suggest that the assessm
entsin these apparently heterogeneous positions m
ight in fact be related to eachother. For exam
ple, the understanding of a story displayed in a sequence ofassessm
ents at
its conclusion
is intim
ately tied
to w
ays in
which
participants were led to see characters and events in the story w
hen theyw
ere first introduced. Assessm
ents thus constitute a most Im
portantresource for collaboratively building w
ithin the talk itself an interpretivecontext that w
ill utilized for the analysis of subsequent talk and action. Inbrief, despite their apparent sim
plicity assessments constitute one central
resource available to participants for organizing the perception andinterpretation of w
hat is being talked about, providing them w
ith the abilityto not sim
ply display alignment to ongoing talk, but establish and negotiate
that alignment through a system
atic process of interaction while the talk
being aligned to is still in progress.T
he data which have been investigated here have enabled us to
investigate a range of issues relevant to how assessm
ents are organized asan activity w
ithin the turn at talk. One of the very interesting things about
assessments is the w
ay in which they integrate a range of phenom
enaoccurring w
ithin the turn that are frequently studied quite separately. In sofar as assessm
ents are achieved through the collaborative action of multiple
participants they provide an elementary exam
ple of social organizationw
ithin the boundaries of the turn. At the sam
e time they constitute a key
locus for the display and achievement of congruent understanding, and thus
are quite relevant to the study of cognition as a practical, everyday activity.In addition they provide an exam
ple of how affect and the display of
emotion are organized as interactive phenom
ena. In accomplishing this
activity participants must pay close attention to w
hat other participants aredoing, the details of
what is happening in the stream
of speech, and the recognizable structureof the activity itself. T
he study of assessments thus perm
its analysis in anintegrated fashion of a range of phenom
ena relevant to the organization oflanguage, culture, cognition and em
otion in the midst of actual interaction.
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