Co-producing assessment in Mandarin conversation
What is it about?
The paper discusses how collaborative production of an utterance serve for a specific action and/or activity - assessment. In particular, it examines how syntactic, prosodic and bodily-visual devices are used to realize collaborative assessment, and what functions these collaborations have in interaction.
Why is it important?
Our study shows that assessments, which are mostly made together with embodied actions in face-to-face interaction, can be recognized without a syntactically complete utterance. In addition, it invites us to reflect critically on the traditional view of grammatical structure as a set of fixed products. The contingent practices used by participants in collaborative assessments have revealed the co-operative nature of grammar and interaction.