Object-side assessment

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Object-side assessment
Author(s):	Bogdana Huma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0482-9580)
To cite:	Huma, Bogdana. (2023). Object-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/DVNMU

An object-side (O-side) assessment, also referred to as an ‘objective evaluation’, is an assessment that indexes attributes of the object it evaluates (e.g., that it is tasty, healthy, nice, awful, etc.). In that sense, it is built as a feature of the world rather than a feature of the speaker’s individual psychology.

Usually, object-side assessments can be recognized on the basis of their grammatical form “the object is X” or some variant thereof (Wiggins & Potter 2003). This is exemplified in the extract below, taken from Pomerantz (1984). In line 1, A assesses Adeline (the object) as “such a swell gal”.

[Pomerantz 1984: 59]

01  A: -> Adeline is such as swell [gal
02  P:                             [Oh God, whadda gal. 
03        You know it!

Object-side assessments can implement various actions, such as paying compliments (Wiggins & Potter 2003) and displaying empathy (Edwards & Potter 2017). They can also be employed to manage the speaker’s accountability for engaging in morally contested conduct, for example making racist remarks (Potter, et al. 2020).

Object-side assessments may be the default form for constructing assessments and appear to be more common than subject-side assessments that index an individual’s disposition towards the assessed object (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
• Preference
• Subject-side assessment

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.