Do high-grade assessments (such as “lovely” and “brilliant”) have a use in marking episodes in mundane conversation? Inspection suggests that closing sequences in telephone conversations, when they include such embedded actions as making arrangements, have a slot which can be filled by a turn-initial high-grade assessment. I suggest that the high-grade assessment makes a special display of resuming a closing which had been suspended. I make a link between marked resumption in such mundane closings and more institutional agenda-marking, and speculate that using a resumptive high-grade assessment might display a claim to `ownership' of the closedown sequence.
Antaki, C., Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. and Rapley, M. (2000) `“Brilliant. Next Question . . . ”: High-Grade Assessment Sequences in the Completion of Interactional Units', Research on Language and Social Interaction33: 235—62.
2.
Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. (eds) (1984) Structures of Social Action: Studies on Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Beach, W.A. (1995) `Preserving and Constraining Options: “Okays” and “Official” priorities in medical interviews', in G.H. Morris and R.J. Chenail (eds) The Talk of the Clinic: Explorations in the Analysis of Medical and Therapeutic Discourse, pp. 259—89. Hillsdale, NJ: LEA.
4.
Button, G. (1987) `Moving out of Closings', in G. Button and J.R.E. Lee (eds) Talk and Social Organisation, pp. 101—51. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
5.
Heritage, J. (1984) `A Change of State Token and Aspects of its Sequential Placement', in J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, pp. 299—345. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
6.
Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. (2000) Interaction and the Standardised Survey Interview: The Living Questionnaire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
Pomerantz, A. (1984) `Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes', in J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis , pp. 57—101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation, Vols I and II, ed. G. Jefferson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell .
9.
Schegloff, E. and Sacks, H. (1974) `Opening up Closings', in R. Turner (ed.) Ethnomethodology. Harmondsworth : Penguin.
10.
Svartvik, J. and Quirk, R. (1980) A Corpus of Conversational English. Lund: Gleerup.
