Analysing everyday conversation 147predicting where it is realized by an informing move. Apart from the theoretical
difficulties this would raise (F and I would become indistinguishable), it is
counter-intuitive in examples such as the following (from our data) where
the exchange is heard as incomplete:
Example 22 move e.s
A: I mean nothing could have informing I
happened to it (high termination)
We propose that under normal circumstances the minimum number of moves
in an exchange (other than a Boundary exchange—see above, p. 136) is
two. In other words, R is obligatory whatever the exchange type. This is
because both participants are obliged to give evidence of taking part in the
conversation (assuming of course that it is a dialogue as opposed to a multi-
party conversation), and, specifically, of listening or ‘paying attention’ to
each other. This may be argued informally as follows. If speaker A volunteers
information ‘out of the blue’, she needs confirmation that B has heard her,
and has absorbed the information. The information must therefore be
acknowledged. If, on the other hand, speaker B as secondary knower elicits
a piece of information from speaker A, it is obvious that B is listening for
an answer and therefore the information need not actually be acknowledged
for the exchange to be well-formed. In other words, an informing move at
I must be followed by an acknowledging move at R, whereas an identical
informing move at R, following an eliciting move at I, does not predict an
acknowledging move at F. This explains why the utterance
Example 23
A: Geoff ran gI
is incomplete, needing the acknowledgement
B: Oh thanks R
whereas
B: Any messages I
A: Geoff ran gR
is complete. An additional
B: Oh (thanks) F
is polite but optional.
There are, however, two circumstances under which the predicted R may not
occur, yet the exchange remains complete. The first is where one of the participants
(or group of people) has curtailed speaking rights and, moreover, is assumed
to be listening and absorbing information simply by being present. The obligation
to provide acknowledgement has been suspended by an unspoken agreement
under the terms of which one participant in the conversation is the speaker and
the other is the listener. This listener’s role is institutionalized for school pupils,