154 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
the unrealized acknowledging move is heard as representing positive or negative
evaluation will depend on teaching style and on the utterance following the
unrealized move. In some classrooms the pupils are wrong unless told they
are right, in other classrooms vice versa. In the following example the obligatory
but unstated evaluation at the end of the first exchange is clearly positive:
This argument, that an obligatory element of exchange structure may be
coded as present, although unrealized (unless what follows contradicts this
interpretation), has already been used in our discussion of the guide and the
tourist group (Example (21)) and of ‘Oh hold on I’ve got to get the extension
hold on’ (Example (24)). It is interesting to speculate how much further this
principle of implied elements of exchange structure may be taken. The
following examples occurred in our students’ data:
Example 40
(A customer (A) is attempting to negotiate a lower price with a shop
assistant (B))