Subject-side assessment

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Subject-side assessment
Author(s):	Bogdana Huma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0482-9580)
To cite:	Huma, Bogdana. (2023). Subject-side assessment. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/43JHC

A subject-side (S-side) assessment, also referred to as a ‘subjective evaluation’, is an assessment that indexes an individual’s disposition towards the assessed object (e.g., I like/love/hate/etc.). In that sense, it is built as a feature of the individual’s psychology, rather than a feature of the world.

Usually, subject-side assessments can be recognized on the basis of their grammatical form “I X object” or some variant thereof (Wiggins & Potter 2003). This is exemplified in the extract below, taken from Pomerantz (1984). In line 2, A displays her independent appreciation of an event that she and B took part in, while also agreeing with the latter’s first assessment.

[Pomerantz 1984: 60]

01  B:    Well, it was fun Cla[ire
02  A: ->                     [Yeah, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Subject-side assessments can implement various actions, such as accounting for one’s (future) conduct, refusing offers (Wiggins & Potter 2003), and receipting compliments (Edwards & Potter 2017). Two other features of subject-side assessments are worth noting. First, by producing a subject-side assessment, a speaker claims to have epistemic access to the assessed object (Wiggins & Potter 2003). Second, by constructing the assessment as a personal judgment of the speaker, rather than a characteristic of the object, a subject-side assessment provides for the production of preceding or subsequent disagreeing assessments to be treated as non-contradictory (Edwards & Potter 2017; Potter, et al. 2020). These two features are illustrated in the extract below. Jod’s negative subject-side assessment (line 5) of her own top (i.e., piece of clothing) misaligns but does not contradict Sas’s positive assessment.

[Edwards & Potter 2017: 507]

01  Jen:     Is that a new top?
02  Sas:     Yeh
03  Jod:     Is it nice?
04  Ann:     Ye[h
05  Jod: ->    [I really don’t like it

Subject-side assessments are less common than object-side assessments that index an attribute of an object’s (Edwards & Potter 2017). Besides object-side and subject-side, assessments can also take two other forms:

1. fusions – constructed using lexical terms that index both a feature of an object and the speaker’s subjective state (e.g., lovely, depressing, worrying, encouraging, etc.), and
2. combinations – comprising both an object-side and a subject-side assessment (Edwards & Potter 2017). Note that the order in which the two assessments are produced is consequential for their interactional functions. Combinations of object-side then subject-side assessments, which are most common, are implicated in doing agreement and building affiliation. Combinations of subject-side then object-side assessments are deployed in the management of delicate or contentious issues (Potter, et al. 2020).

Wiggins and Potter (2003) were the first authors to note the distinction between objective and subjective evaluative constructions; however, the terms “object-side assessment” and “subject-side assessment” were introduced by Edwards and Potter in a 2012 keynote at the Conference on Discourse, Communication and Conversation and then elaborated in their 2017 article.

Additional Related Entries:

• Assessment
• Object-side assessment
• Preference

Cited References:

Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (2012, March 21-23). Descriptions and Assessments [Keynote]. Discourse, Communication and Conversation Conference, Loughborough, UK.

Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (2017). Some uses of subject-side assessments. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 497–514.

Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge University Press.

Potter, J., Hepburn, A., & Edwards, D. (2020). Rethinking attitudes and social psychology–Issues of function, order, and combination in subject-side and object-side assessments in natural settings. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 17(3), 336–356.

Wiggins, S., & Potter, J. (2003). Attitudes and evaluative practices: category vs. item and subjective vs. objective constructions in everyday food assessments. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42(4), 513–531.

Additional References:

van der Heijden, A., te Molder, H., Huma, B., & Jager, G. (2021). To like or not to like: Negotiating food assessments of children from families with a low socioeconomic position. Appetite, 170, 105853.