16 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
In accordance with the above premises, Brazil proposed that speech is
best understood as a happening or process and not as a product. Most forms of
written language are presented as complete texts.^4 Writers have numerous
opportunities to revise their work which masks the physical process of their
writing one word after another. Similarly readers are at liberty to re-read.
Spoken language, on the other hand, is usually presented as a fl ow of
words in real time which hearers interpret on a piecemeal basis without the
opportunity of hearing more than once. Halliday (1994: xxii–xxiii) states
that ‘writing exists whereas speech happens’ and Brazil’s claim is that the
process of speech is usefully described by a linear grammar.
2.2 How Brazil Identifi ed Increments
An act of telling, Brazil claims, is ultimately dependent on whether or not
the speaker has satisfi ed a communicative need. He provides the following
examples (1987: 148):
(1) Speaker A: I saw John in town. #^5
Speaker B: Oh.and remarks that B is evidently satisfi ed that A has told something relevant
to the present informational needs. However, in another situation the same
sequence of elements may not in itself meet the present informational
needs, e.g.
(2) Speaker A: I saw John in town. He is going back to the States. #
Speaker B: Oh.He states that: ‘the fact of seeing John is not itself newsworthy’. In order
to satisfy the present informational needs speaker A is obliged to carry
on speaking until speaker B’s communicative needs have been satisfi ed.
Brazil’s claim is that identifi cation of increments is only possible in con-
text. However, for a sequence of elements to be identifi able as potential
increments they must also fulfi l two necessary but not suffi cient criteria:
one intonational; the other syntactic.
2.2.1 Intonational criterion
Brazil (1997) sets out Brazil’s theory of discourse intonation where he
argues that the speakers engaged in a communicative event select either