Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

Analysing everyday conversation 143

As the utterance ‘It’s you that doesn’t work’ is not heard as the start of a
new exchange (on the grounds of intonation) it cannot be classed as informing,
and this would remain the case even if there were no preceding move head
as there is here.
To turn to acknowledging moves, these can occur at R or F, but they
cannot initiate an exchange or occur at R/I. This is consistent with the
concept of the exchange as a unit in which information is transmitted:
the acknowledging move is seen as a response or a reaction to the
information. There is, then, no ‘Acknowledge’ exchange to parallel Elicit
and Inform.
Given the acknowledging move’s special status in this respect, we also
see that it is the only move which may occur at two places in the I R F
exchange, that is at both R and F of the same exchange. This is unique
because neither the eliciting move nor the informing move can occur at
both I and R unless an R/I element is also present (see the diagram on p.
141). It should be noted that when an I R F exchange consists of the three
moves

informin gI

acknowledging R

acknowledging F

only the first acknowledging move is predicted (see p. 136). The third move
is unpredicted, or entirely optional, and is therefore coded as F. An example
from our data is:

Returning now to eliciting and informing moves, we note that although it
is not permissible for the same move to realize two elements of structure in
an I R F exchange, once the element R/I is introduced further possibilities
come into play. Indeed, as there are only three moves (leaving aside the
Direct exchange) it is clear that one move will have to be repeated, since
acknowledging cannot occur at R/I. The following are examples from our
data of exchanges with two informing or two eliciting moves.
Informing moves at I and R: