116 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
T: I’ve got some things here too. (starter)
Hands up. (cue)
What’s that, what is it. (elicit)is made up of three acts—a starter, which prepares students for what is to
come; a cue, which encourages students to offer their answers; and an elicit,
a question which carries the basic function of the move. So a move can be
made up of a series of acts. This is one reason why we need to go to the
rank of act for a full description. There is another reason too. We saw
earlier that I, R and F were places in structure which were filled or realized
by moves taken from specified classes. In the same way moves serve as
places in structure which are filled in turn by acts.
If we look at:
T: What is it?
P: Pair of scissors.
T: Pair of scissors. Yes, pair of scissors.
at the rank of move we have an Opening move, an Answering move and a
Follow-up move. And if we look at:
A: What’s that you’ve got?
B: A pair of scissors.
A: Oh.also at the rank of move, we have exactly the same analysis. But if we move
to the rank of act we have quite a different picture. In the first exchange we
have a Follow-up move realized by an evaluate:
Realized by statements and tag questions, including words and phrases
such as ‘good’, ‘interesting’, ‘team point’, commenting on the quality of
the reply, react or initiation, also by ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘good’, ‘fine’, with a
high—fall intonation.
(Sinclair and Coulthard, this volume, p. 21)In the second exchange, however, the Follow-up move is not realized by an
evaluate. Strictly according to the system described in Sinclair/Coulthard an
evaluate must be present in a Follow-up move in the classroom since only
an evaluate can function as the head, that is to say the obligatory element
in the Follow-up move. There are, however, places in their analysis where
the Follow-up move is realized not by an evaluate but by an accept. On one
occasion a pupil takes the initiative and tells the teacher something about
a recent television programme. This is followed by an eliciting exchange:
T: When was this?
P: On Monday I think.
T: Good gracious me, that’s fairly recently.Here the teacher’s Follow-up move is described as being realized by an
accept. There are problems with the analysis. An accept is described as: