Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

Analysing everyday conversation 155

It seems, then, that there are certain circumstances in which a missing,
obligatory element of structure is implied or ‘understood’. Those suggested
so far are:

(i) the acknowledging move in a primary knower initiated Elicit
exchange;
(ii) the answering move in a Structuring exchange;
(iii) the acknowledging move in an Inform exchange;
(iv) the informing move in an Elicit exchange where the head of the
eliciting move is realized by a neutral or marked proposal.

The advantage of the ‘implied element approach is that it concurs with
the intuition that nothing is missing in the exchanges cited above (Examples
(38)–(42)), without involving the resort to double labelling (see pp. 149–
52 above) to show the coherence of a conversation. It is of course necessary
to allow, however, that a certain coding may be tentative until confirmed
or contradicted by what follows. The unrealized elements are ‘understood’
if and only if what follows in the discourse is consistent with that
interpretation.

Example 41

(Two students are discussing their experiences while taking part in a

procession)