Assessment

Uwe-A. Küttner (Leibniz-Institute for the German Language, Mannheim) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1688-0896)

To cite: Küttner, Uwe-A. (2023). 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:

Most broadly, an assessment is a type of social action by which an interactant expresses an evaluative stance towards someone or something (e.g., an object, an event, an action, an experience, a state of affairs, a place, a circumstance, etc.). The target of an assessment is typically called the ‘assessable’.

Assessing is pervasive and routine in social interaction and so researchers have adopted different strategies in operationalizing assessments in, and for the purposes of, particular studies. Some have made the presence of positively or negatively valenced lexically assessing terms (e.g., adjectives such as good, lovely, bad, terrible, evaluative verbs like I love/hate it) a decisive criterion (e.g., Sidnell & Enfield 2012: 312; Thompson et al. 2015; Pomerantz 1984). Others have adopted a more inclusive approach, allowing for non-lexical or lexically non-valenced stance displays such as Oo::h!, A::w or Oh wow! and even completely embodied ones to count as assessments (e.g., C. Goodwin 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin 1987; 1992; M. H. Goodwin 1980; see also Barth-Weingarten, et al. 2021; Goodwin & Cekaite 2018: 26-31; but cf. Heath 1989, esp. p. 122, fn. 6, as well as Jenkins & Hepburn 2015 on pain cries). Yet others have found it useful to distinguish conceptually between taking a stance and assessing as a social action, especially when dealing with lexically non-valenced stance displays (e.g., Kärkkäinen 2012; Local & Walker 2008; Wiggins 2002, 2012).

Evaluating someone or something can be participants’ primary concern in a stretch of talk, such that assessments can constitute independent social actions in and of themselves. In contexts of (presumed) shared experience with, or joint access to, the assessable, first assessments have been said to generally make agreement/disagreement from a co-participant relevant next actions and to thereby engender larger assessment sequences (Heritage & Raymond 2005; Pomerantz 1984). However, there has been some debate about the sequential implicativeness of such first assessments (and whether assessment sequences are indeed generically organized as adjacency pairs), with some research suggesting that they can vary considerably in terms of how strongly they attract or mobilize subsequent agreement/disagreement (Stivers & Rossano 2010a, 2010b; cf. Couper-Kuhlen 2010; Schegloff 2010).

With some exceptions (e.g., self-deprecations, criticism), agreeing responses are generally preferred over disagreeing ones (Pomerantz 1975, 1984; but see Auer & Uhmann 1982; Kotthoff 1993; Mondada 2009a). Both agreement and disagreement may be accomplished in various ways and through a wide range of practices, which themselves mobilize a diverse set of verbal, vocal and embodied resources (see, e.g., M. H. Goodwin 1980, 2007; Mondada 2009a; Ogden 2006; Pomerantz 1984; Schegloff 1987; Thompson, et al. 2015: ch. 4).

Since assessments are (treated as) products of experience and, in their production, embody a claim to such experience/experiential knowledge of the matter being assessed (Pomerantz 1984: 57-58, Goodwin & Goodwin 1987: 9), assessment sequences form a rich site for the display, negotiation and management of epistemic concerns, such as participants’ differential access, entitlement to and authority over (certain stocks of) knowledge and experience (see, e.g., Heritage 2002, 2013; Heritage & Raymond 2005; Raymond & Heritage 2006; Stivers et al. 2011; see also Edwards & Potter 2017; Hayano 2011, 2016; Wiggins & Potter 2003).

Assessments may also be produced in a range of other contexts. For example, they play a prominent role in the responsive receipt of news announcements (e.g., Freese & Maynard 1998; Maynard 2003; Maynard & Freese 2012) and informings (e.g., Thompson, et al. 2015) or as approving receipts of proposals (e.g., Seuren 2018; Stevanovic 2012). Similarly, they may be produced in the context of extended reportings and storytellings, both as teller’s devices for contextualizing the story’s point and as recipients’ devices for affiliating or disaffiliating with the storyteller (e.g., C. Goodwin 1986; Jefferson 1978; Selting 2017; Stivers 2008).

In accordance with their experiential character, it has been observed that assessments are commonly proffered towards the end of 'topics', sequences and activities, as devices for bringing them to a close (e.g., Antaki, et al. 2000; Antaki 2002; Mondada 2009b; Schegloff 2007; Thompson et al. 2015). On the other hand, assessments are also often produced in, and reflexively create, moments of heightened interactional participation and affective involvement (e.g., C. Goodwin 1986, 2007; Goodwin & Goodwin 1987, 1992; Mondada 2009b; Selting 1994).

Finally, assessments may also figure as co-constitutive ingredients in a plethora of other actions and activities, such as complaining (e.g., Dersley & Wootton 2000; Drew 1998; Günthner 2000; Heinemann & Traverso 2009; Selting 2012), gossiping (e.g., Bergmann 1993), shaming/admonishing (Potter & Hepburn 2020), advice-giving (e.g., Shaw, et al. 2015), praising/complimenting (Golato 2002, 2005, 2011; Pillet-Shore 2015; Pomerantz 1978), as well as numerous others.

Additional Related Entries:

• Adjacency pair
• Affect
• Epistemics
• Object-side assessment
• Preference'
• Stance
• Subject-side assessment

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