Pomerantz (1984)

In conversation, speakers are constantly making assessments to accomplish an action for certain purposes, like compliment, complaints, self-deprecation etc. When an assessment is made, the interactants can either support or oppose to the assessment.

The assessment is defined by Pomerantz as “a product of participation in social

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activities and occasioned conversational events with sequential constraints” (p.58).

When the presumed basis of knowledge is insufficient or incorrect, the first assessment is denied by the second assessment. According to Pomerantz (1984), second assessment is the subsequent assessment to the prior assessment. In the agreement preferred condition (mostly agreement is preferred, since coordination in conversation is usually pursued), a speaker’s first assessment mainly aims to invite a recipient for the agreement. Several types of agreement are introduced in Pomerantz’s (1984) study. The first type is upgrade. Upgrade agreements is that the assessment responded to the prior one with upgraded evaluative terms. For example:

(1) A: That (heh) s(heh) sounded (hhh) g(hh)uh!

B: That sound’ --- that sounded lovely …

(Pomerantz 1984:65)

In the first assessment, A describes that something sounded good. To show the strong agreement with the prior assessment, B upgrades good to lovely. The evaluative term lovely strengthens the positive evaluation carried out by A. The second type of agreement is same evaluation. By repeating the prior speaker’s words, the recipient achieves the goal of agreeing with the first assessment.

(2) C: …She was a nice lady – I liked her G: I liked her too.

(Pomerantz 1984:67)

G repeats C’s words I like her and the addition of too to show the stronger agreement and clear stance that they share the same attitude toward one thing. Though this type of agreement can also function as the preface of disagreements (which will be discussed later), the fundamental function of same evaluation is to proffer a

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preferred assessment of agreement. The third type of agreement is downgrade. A recipient downgrades/weakens the evaluative term of the assessment asserted by the prior speaker and makes the assessment more like a weak agreement. Since the assessment is weakened, downgraded agreements “regularly engender disagreement sequences” (Pomerantz, 1984: 69) and may be classified as weak agreement. The speaker who initiates the topic will use stronger evaluation to upgrade the weak agreement and to express the disagreement.

(3) A: She’s a fox

L: Yeh, she’s a pretty girl.

A: Oh, she’s gorgeous!

(Pomerantz 1984:68)

In example (3), A initiates the topic and praises some girl saying that she’s a fox, which is a metaphor to imply that the girl is amazingly beautiful. However, L downgrades the metaphor and says she’s a pretty girl to slightly disagree with A’s comment. Using pretty to tone down the degree of beauty, L weakens the assessment proffered by A. Hence, the disagreement of L leads to a subsequent disagreement by A.

In order to counter-attack L’s comment, A intensifies the degree of beauty with the word gorgeous. The response by L seems to be an agreement, structurally. In fact, the downgrading strategy might be the preface for the following sequential disagreement.

Partial agreement is also a type of partial disagreement, which can be considered a kind of weak agreement.

Disagreements in agreement preferred situations, on the other hand, are usually prefaced with some delay devices like “no talk, request for clarification, partial repeats, and other repair initiators, turn prefaces, and so on” (p .70). To avoid direct conflict, Pomerantz found that most disagreements are basically constructed with

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prefaced mitigation. Before the disagreement components, silence, delayed utterances (i.e. “uh”, “well”), request for clarification (i.e. “what ?”, “hm”), repair initiators and the like can be viewed as the preface of disagreements. Disagreements with modified preface are basically equal to the so called “weak agreement/disagreement” since the assessments have been modified in avoidance of aggressive opposition shown as contrastive evaluation. On the contrary, if the second assessment is a bald evaluation opposing to the prior assessment, it can be called a “strong disagreement.” This type of disagreement, as usual, is not preferred (Pomerantz, 1984:74). Agreement is preferred since people construct sociability and solidarity based on it. However, “there are nonetheless circumstances in which sociability and support are accomplished by disagreeing” (1984:77). That is so-called disagreement preferred circumstance, in which a speaker self-deprecates him/herself. Disagreements are invited and preferred so as to improve the connection with the interlocutor. The turn shape of response to self-deprecation, according to Pomerantz, is generally occupied by disagreement components. There are routinely no or few “contrastive components before or after the disagreements as part of the unit” (1984:83). Some disagreement components are prevalent, including partial repeats, negations, and compliments. Disagreeing with self-deprecation would contain partial repeat which challenges the previous assessment with rhetorical questions, as illustrated in (4).

(4) Partial repeats

B: I’m tryina get slim.

A: Ye:ah? You get slim, my heavens.

B: Heh heh heh heh hh hh A: You don’t need to get any slimmah.

(Pomerantz 1984:83)

Some disagreements are initiated with negations like “no” or “not.”

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(5) Negations

B: I was wondering if I’d ruined yer- weekend by uh A: No. No. Hm-mh. No. I just loved to have- …

(Pomerantz 1984:84)

Second assessments in response to the prior assessment usually include evaluative terms. In order to disagree with the prior self-deprecation, compliments are favorable terms to show a contrastive opinion.

(6) Compliments

B: And I never was a grea(h)t Bri(h)dge plav(h)er Clai(h)re, A: Well I think you’ve always been real good,

(Pomerantz 1984:85)

If there is no overt disagreement made and a long pause is instead used to follow the assessment, the silence will be interpreted as implicitly confirmed by the recipient.

That is, the prior self-deprecatory assessment is accepted, as a way to show agreement.

Whether in disagreement preferred or dispreferred situations, silence seems to be a dispreferred reaction, either as a delaying device of disagreement or implicit agreement of prior self-deprecation.

To sum up, Pomerantz (1984) distinguishes agreement from disagreement according to approval or denial of an assessment. Depending on different goals of the conversation, agreement is expected through the invitation from speakers and disagreement is unwelcome most of the time. Agreements can be achieved through several techniques like upgrade, same evaluation, and downgrade. Disagreements have a more complicated structure since they are usually prefaced. Pomerantz introduced a few types of favorable disagreement components like partial repeats,

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negations, and compliments. Disagreements are usually not favorable, but sometimes are preferred. Self-deprecation or self-mockery, for instance, welcomes disagreements and compliments because of the need for positive face-want.