46 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
We can see this same phenomenon of pitch concord working in examples
(29) and (30), both of them taken from the same doctor/patient interview.
29 D: // its DRY skin // ISn’t it // P: // MM //
30 D: // VERy IRritating you say // P: // VERy irritating //
The initial key choices in the answers in both (29) and (30) have the meanings
we have already discussed, and in both we can see the first speaker asking
for or constraining a response of a particular kind by his final termination
choice. Thus, in (29), the doctor ends with mid termination because he
wants the patient to agree with his observation, while in (30) he wants the
patient to exploit the contrastive ‘yes not no’ meaning of high key to confirm
what he has said. Had the doctor stopped at ‘skin’, in example (29), his
question would have had a very different force, and he would again have
been heard as asking for confirmation of a fact in doubt; but both the key
and the lexical realization of the rest of the utterance show that what is
required is agreement with a presumed shared opinion.
The pressure towards pitch concord can, of course, be disregarded; the
patient could have responded to the doctor’s mid key ‘isn’t it’ with a high
key ‘yes’ or ‘mm’, but telling the doctor he was correct would, in these
circumstances, sound like noncompliant behaviour, suggesting perhaps annoyance
at an unnecessary question. In example (31) below the patient solves his
dilemma by selecting the predicted agreeing mid key but also lexicalizing
the correctness just to make sure.
31 D: // FIVE tiller ROAD // ISn’t it //
P: // THAT’S corRECT // YES //
While high and mid termination place concord constraints on what follows,
low termination does not; it marks, in fact, the point at which prospective
constraints stop and thus occurs frequently at the boundaries of exchanges,
as in:
32 D: Whereabouts in your chest?
P: On the heart side.
D: // YES //
33 D: And how long have you had those for?
P: Well I had them er a week last Wednesday.
D: // a WEEK last WEDnesday //
It is not unusual in certain types of interaction for even an answer to end
with low termination. Example (34) is unremarkable:
34 A: // have you GOT the TIME //
B: // its THREE o’CLOCK //
In choosing low termination, the second speaker does not preclude the first
from making a follow-up move but he certainly does not constrain him to