172 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
Instead it seems safer to regard the high termination as seeking active
hearer intervention; it invites the hearer to be active in contrast with a mid
termination selection which signals an expectation that the hearer will
listen passively and not exercise an independent judgement. In (19) the
high termination presents the proposition expressed as information which
the speaker does not expect the hearer to passively accept. He presents the
fact that within a week the journalist managed to create riots as information which
his hearer may have some diffi culty in accommodating within his world
view. The high termination anticipates a high-key contrastive reply, i.e.
an overt response that the proposition was contrary to the previously
generated expectations. In fact, such an expectation of a high-key response
is notional and as Brazil (ibid. 60) reminds us, active hearer intervention in
practice incorporates a range of activities from verbal responses to silent
head nods.
The discussion above has shown that the communicative value realized by
high termination is not easy to gloss. The label ‘invitation to adjudicate’,
while capable of explaining the communicative value of many high ter-
minations, is for other high terminations inappropriately precise. A looser
gloss of ‘inviting active hearer intervention’ seems more appropriate to
cover the values realized by all high terminations.
7.2.1 High termination in increment fi nal position
Figures 7.1 and 7.2 illustrate that there is little difference between the
co-occurrence between tone and increment fi nal position and between
the co-occurrence of tone and increment fi nal high termination. In other
words, there does not appear to be a tendency for high-termination
choices to favour a particular tone: though there is a slight increase in the
76%8%13%0%3%Fall
Rise
Fall-Rise
Level
Rise-FallFigure 7.1 The co-occurrence of tone and increment fi nal position