174 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
to be inviting her hearer to consider the signifi cance of what she presents
as the surprising danger that international terrorists have the ability to
set nation against nation in the achievement of their nefarious ends. Her
termination choice anticipates a notional high-key contrastive response
indicating that she presents the proposition, expressed in example (20), as
likely to be contrary to her hearer’s expectations.
A similar example is found in (21) where again the high termination
does not invite the hearer to respond with an adjudicative high key yes
or no. Bs is not asking his hearer to adjudicate whether or not Muslims
in America are free to worship but rather is asking the hearer to consider the
signifi cance of the fact that they are free to worship!
(21) MUslims in a\MErica // as FAR as i m a\WARE // are FREE
N+ p n aphr n v e V E
to \↑WORship // [T2-Bs-61]V'
The increment fi nal high termination anticipates a notational contrastive
high-key response which indicates that Bs projects a context where his
hearer will fi nd the target state achieved after production of example (21)
contrary to the previously generated discourse expectations^14 which have
reported the propaganda that America’s purpose is to suppress Islam. The
hearers are invited to produce an active response of one kind or another
to signal that they are successfully following the speaker’s narrative and
integrating it into their individual world views.
Monologue precludes an overt verbal response but hearers are free to
signal their engagement through non-verbal means such as head nods,
smiles or raised eyebrows. Goodwin (2003: 23ff.) describes such non-verbal
gestures as ‘symbiotic’, and argues that interlocutors make use of them in
co-constructing discourse. Hearers are not passive and their production
of symbiotic gestures plays a supporting role in the co-construction of
the discourse. O’Grady (2006: 188–9) found in a re-interpretation of the
conversational corpus reported in Crystal and Davy that there was only
an active verbal response following 16.6 per cent of increment fi nal high
terminations and that none of the active verbal responses took the form
of a high key adjudicative yes or no, or words carrying the same meaning.
If Goodwin is correct, and the evidence appears to indicate that he is, the
hearers must have adjudicated through non-verbal means.
Increment fi nal high termination invites the hearer to assist the speaker
by playing a non-passive and supportive role in jointly constructing the