222 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
preceding it. But, in the longer example, the intonation of //r it MUST have
been // is related to something that happened in the first tone unit, //p he
COULDn’t //, and three other tone units have intervened. Some interest
would seem to attach to the question of how long the ‘memory’ of something
read at one point in the text continues to be operative as a determinant of
later intonation choices. Once a feature of the state of convergence has been
established in the text, how long does it remain in play, as something that
the reader will orientate towards?
This last question assumes, of course, that we are indeed dealing with
a case of Stage 4 engagement: that in making intonational decisions the
reader relies exclusively on what has gone before in the text. In reality,
everything that has gone before, however remote it may be from what is
being read now, merges with those extra-textual areas of shared background
that play such a big part in shaping the intonation of spontaneous speech.
In other words, the greater the span of influence of an earlier tone unit
upon a later one, the closer we seem to be getting to the next stage on our
continuum.
ENGAGEMENT: 5
Stage 5 brings us to the point where reading aloud most closely approximates
to spontaneous interaction. We can think now of a kind of reading that
replicates interactive speech: speech in which participants pursue conversational
purposes taking into account the entire complex network of shared assumptions.
Obviously, what is involved goes far beyond confronting a text and making
phonological recognition of the relationships among its parts in the way
we visualized for Stage 4. The reader now has to be credited with seeing
the text as the embodiment of a speaker’s viewpoint, with assimilating
that viewpoint to his or her own, and with creating notional hearers for
whom the expressed information has relevance and who have a distinctive
viewpoint of their own. Apart from the fact that memorization is not involved,
the situation is similar to that of an actor performing lines already set
down for him as if they were an expression of his own conversational
purpose vis-à-vis another character. It is different, however, to a greater or
lesser degree, in that whereas the ‘other world’ (or ‘worlds’) upon which
the speech will impinge is largely provided by the actor’s understanding
of his supposed relationship with other characters within the framework
of the play, our reader is likely to have a less clearly delineated world to
direct his message to.
It may be helpful to recall what the intermeshing of worlds means for the
speaker before going on to consider the rather different position of the
reader. For the speaker, the crucial background of shared assumptions originates,
to an only limited extent, in what is objectively present in the language. It
comprises, in fact, the entire set of shared experiences that participants
bring to the interaction, whether these are shared by reason of their personal