86 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
I Put the chopsticks away Ann-Marie
R A’right (puts them down)
F Good girl
(data from Francis and Hunston)The third move in this example is quite distinctive, and restricted to areas
of discourse where one participant has the right to evaluate the behaviour
of another. In general discourse F moves can range from mumbles transcribed
as Hah, Yeah, Mm, to reactions like Whatever, Oh dear, and on to substantial
structures like That’s what I would have thought too, and Yeah, my feet hurt
(data from Francis and Hunston).
ENCAPSULATION
The mechanism of the F move is that it contains a reference to the IR pair.
The reference may be explicit, as in That in the example above, or implicit,
as in Yeah, Mm, etc. In the latter examples the reference has to be retrieved
by considering exactly what is being assented to. Although little more than
a low-intonation mumble, these all have the effect of indicating that, for the
speaker, the discourse is proceeding coherently; the other participants then
have an opportunity to say otherwise, but it is expected that they will agree
and be reassured by the F move.
A reaction like Oh dear is a reaction to a proposition which is split
between the I and R moves; in the example above the proposition is something
like ‘the person I am speaking to woke up pretty late today’. In order to
understand the F move, we must retrieve I and R.
This mechanism is called encapsulation (Sinclair, forthcoming) and is
one of the two principal mechanisms of coherence in discourse structure. It
is essentially retrospective in nature but is quite different from ordinary
cohesion because it encapsulates complete IR pairs. The other one is prospection,
already featured in this chapter.
AN OUTLINE MODEL OF DISCOURSE STRUCTURE
Each Initiation move in spoken discourse prospects a Response, unless it is
a simple articulation of a proposition. The Response, being prospected,
concludes an adjacency pair and opens the possibility of encapsulation by
an F move. Another participant may make a Challenge move after I or R,
and thus begin a new exchange.
An Initiation which does not prospect a Response may still get one; otherwise
an F move may directly follow the Initiation. Additional F moves are optional.
The F move is only obligatory in certain specialized varieties of discourse:
its likelihood depends on a number of variables. But it is a permanent
option in the structure of the exchange, following an I-without-R or an IR
pair. The prospection of F is not the same as the prospection of R by I.