76 A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse
(37) // — the SQUARE of the hyPOTenuse // — of a RIGHTangled
d n P d n P d e
TRIangle//
N
— is equal to the SUM of the SQUARES // \ on the Other two
V E P d N P d N P d e
SIDES //
N #^28
(Brazil 1997: 138)It seems that (37) realizes the communicative value of introducing an
increment into the discourse which the speaker is unable or unwilling
to label as an act of telling. In (37) this inability or unwillingness to tell
routinizes the teacher’s remark. The teacher seemingly presents his
information as so obviously true that his hearers will fully agree with the
statement without raising any objection. It appears that some instances of
level tone such as (37) can be notated in the grammar as oblique increments;
however, such a solution does not appear suffi cient to explain utterances like
(36) which have a different tonal composition. The analysis in Chapter 5
explores how to encode utterances like (36) within increments.
3.4.3 Summary
To conclude, it has been demonstrated that there is support in the liter-
ature for the view that speakers form and label their utterances based upon
their assumptions of the state of speaker/hearer shared convergence. Two
infl uential theories of the discoursal function of intonation were compared
and contrasted with Brazil (1997) and it was found that both theories sup-
ported Brazil’s central claim that only end-falling tones have the potential
to label an utterance as a potential act of telling. Not all instances of fl uent
speech can be categorized as used. Exceptions include ritual language,
public prayer, read aloud poetry and calling contours. It appears that
(recently) speakers in spontaneous discourse may have begun to produce
level tone in pursuance of their individual communicative goals and it is
suggested that such instances be classifi ed as part of used language.
3.5 Speech is Cooperative
The view that speech is a cooperative happening is most closely associated
with the work of Grice who argues (1975: 45–6) that successful speakers