A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments

Increments and Tone 137

interpersonal meaning. Fourteen increment fi nal rises were located in the
corpus attached to tone units which contained only the elements you know.
These 14 increment fi nal rises are dubbed interpersonal fi nal rises because
production of the elements which the rise attaches to does not result in the
creation of a further intermediate state. Sinclair and Mauranen (2006: 73)
classify such elements as interactive-oriented organizational (OI) elements.
Such elements function as an expression of the speaker’s attitude and
are used to manage the discourse. They seek to infl uence or constrain
the hearer’s attitude and behaviour. Examples (1) and (2) provide two
representative examples of an increment fi nal interpersonal rise.

(1) we have PLUral so\CIeties // you /KNOW // [T2-Dc-61]

N V d ̊ e N CON

INT1 INT2 TS TS

(2) you can SEE it in \CHECHnya //

N V V' N p N

INT1 INT2 INT2 INT3 TS

you /KNOW // [T2-Tr-16]

CON

TS

Had speaker Dc in (1) chosen to end her increment immediately after
her production of societies she would have asserted the fact that we have
plural societies. Yet, she chose not to do so and her choice not to do so by its
mere presence has value. The double headed arrow indicates that the fi nal
tone unit containing a rising tone does not alter the fact the speaker has
previously achieved target state. It indicates that the speaker projects that
the hearer is to perceive the target state in a different manner. Rather than
simply modifying the hearer’s existing cognitive environment the speaker
has projected a state of circumstances which explicitly defers to the hearer by
signalling that the speaker projects her increment as referring to informa-
tion which was previously part of the hearer’s potential knowledge.
Similarly, in (2) Tr defers to the hearer by projecting a context in which
the hearer was potentially capable of recognizing the effect of terror in
Chechnya without him having had to produce the increment. Yet, he did
produce the increment! The act of deferring serves to project the fi ction
that the speaker and the hearer are on an equal footing; the speaker in
other words, does not have privileged information. The projection of the
hearer as an intimate who shares knowledge with the speaker leads to the