Prosodic salience and the emergence of new decisions: On approving responses to proposals in Finnish workplace interaction
- 作者：Melisa Stevanovic ; melisa.stevanovic@helsinki.fi ; [Author Vitae]
- 关键词：Proposals ; Decision-making ; Prosody ; Pitch contours ; Emotion ; Conversation analysis
- 刊名：Journal of Pragmatics
- 出版年：2012
- 期刊代码：79_03782166
- 类别：cp
- 出版时间：May, 2012
- 卷：44
- 期：6-7
- 页码：843-862
- 文件大小：744 K
摘要
When participants in joint decision-making approve each other's proposals they typically make action declarations (鈥測ea, let's take it鈥? and/or positive evaluations (鈥測ea, that's good鈥?. This paper focuses on the prosodic features of such 鈥榓pproval turns鈥? Drawing on video-recordings of Finnish workplace interactions, I consider the interactional import of three prosodic patterns. Approval turns that are delivered with a (1) dynamic prosody (increased loudness, excessive pitch movement) establish new decisions, no matter whether the turns are action declarations or positive evaluations. In contrast, approval turns with a (2) flat prosody (decreased loudness, minimal pitch movement) do not鈥攁lone鈥攕uffice for new decisions to emerge. However, when speakers signal their approval with a (3) flat-stylized prosody (stylized figure, embedded in flat prosodic features), new decisions emerge just like with dynamic approval turns. I argue that the similarity of the sequential consequences of the dynamic and flat-stylized approval turns is related to the fact that in both cases the speakers display a clear emotional stance toward the matter at hand鈥攅ven though the 鈥渧alences鈥?of these stances differ from each other. The paper seeks to elucidate the impact of prosodic events in joint decision-making, and the role of emotion as an interactional resource.