the pragmatics of aesthetic assessment in conversation
DESCRIPTION
Judgements of taste are an intrinsic part of everyday conversational interactions: people make assessments and agree and disagree with them as a core part of how they participate in activities, create and share knowledge, and manage their relationships with one another. However, these conversational assessments can seem resistant to some forms of analysis in ways that are summed up neatly in the Scholastic idiom "there's no accounting for taste". This paper approaches the difficulty of analysing judgements of taste in dialogue by looking at them in terms of the pragmatics of talk-in-interaction. An as-yet-unanalysed example of a conversation about an artwork is drawn from Anita Pomerantz' seminal Conversation Analytic (CA) paper on conversational assessments, and examined in order to build up a picture of the mechanisms people use when making aesthetic assessments. This analysis suggests that seemingly high-level aesthetic judgements are accomplished using the same ordinary mechanisms of conversational assessment ubiquitous in everyday talk. Some curious features of topic shifting within assessments are discussed, highlighting some methodological issues for this use of CA, and further research into naturalistic aesthetic assessment is proposed.TRANSCRIPT
The Pragmatics of Aesthetic Assessment in
Conversation
Saul Albert & Patrick G.T. Healey
Queen Mary University of London
19/09/2012
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
D:.hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
C: =Dju make it?
(...)
D:.hhh Well I don't � I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
A: No We bought it, It's a.hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,
D:[.
hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C:[
Oh�d
A:bYe:h
D: Ya:h.
A:[Right.
(1.0)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm
(0.5)
D: Hmm
(...)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm
(0.5)
D: Hmm
(...)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm
(0.5)
D: Hmm
(...)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm
(0.5)
D: Hmm
(...)
Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
(...)
D: Yih d-know why I don't go fer this type of uh:
art, Becuz it� it strikes me ez being the
magazine adverti:sement ty:pe. Which some
uh-uh some a' them are really great. But tuhm
I-my, taste in art is for the more uhit-t-treh-
it tends tuh be realistic.
Parameter shifts in this evaluation:
I the authorship of the print,
I the fame of the author (to co-participants),
I the monetary value of the print,
I the scarcity of the print,
I prior knowledge of the purchase and its authorship
I the correct spelling of the word �Life� in the print
I the degree to which the print is �realistic�, and
I the degree to which the print resembles a magazine advert.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Conventional approaches to aesthetics
I Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
I historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
I institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
I social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
�Such social e�ects are generally demonstrated rhetorically�.
Sister Corita Kent's �Life�
A conversation about Jackson Pollock
Mark Last time I went to the <unclear> was the school one <pause>
Unknown Went to the Royal Academy when I was doing my 'O' Levels,
<unclear> <pause> it was a Jackson follow up it was about,
ambulance was about twelve foot by twelve foot, it was literally
splodges of paint all over the fucking place, it was horrible,
<unclear> you can actually buy them at the Royal Academy, you
can't buy them at <unclear>, but he was asking a hundred thousand
pounds for it, I couldn't believe it, a trained monkey could of
fucking painted that <pause> <unclear>
Mark Well that, it probably is.
Stuart Jackson <unclear> is a monkey at London Zoo.
Mark All you have to do is get one mug buy it, too buy it, he's made
ain't he, ah? <pause dur=5>
Mark I mean <pause> see why they call people like Constable, Rembrandt
a great artist <unclear>
Unknown I never see how they can call anybody like <unclear>
Mark About Picasso a great artist
Stuart Na, I don't know <unclear>
Mark Its just <pause> crap
References I
N Bourriaud. Relational aesthetics. Les presses du reel, Paris, 2002.
Michael Corris. The Dialogical Imagination : The Conversational Aesthetic of Conceptual Art. In DavidHopkins, editor, Avant Garde Critical Studies, pages 301�310. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2006.
G Dickie. The art circle: a theory of art. Haven, Cambridge, 1984.
Clement Greenberg. Avant-garde and kitsch. Partisan Review, pages 1�13, 1939.
Paul Oskar Kristeller. The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of aesthetics part I.Journal of the History of Ideas, 12(4):496�527, 1951.
DW Maynard. Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships. Social PsychologyQuarterly, 47(4):301�316, 1984.
A Pomerantz. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turnshapes. In J Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, editors, Structures of social action: Studies inConversation Analysis, chapter 4, pages 57�102. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984.
H Sacks and EA Scheglo�. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.Language, 50(4):696�735, 1974.
Stephen C. Levinson. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.