Preference for Agreement
From Jsarmi
On Agreements and Disagreements.
One particular research focus here has been the issue of how disagreements in assessment are negotiated within a conversation. Pomerantz (1984) argues that in a majority of contexts in which assessments are being offered, the typical conversational turn preference structure is one of agreement preferred, disagreement dispreferred. Pomerantz’s underlying assumption here is that participants orient to agreement with one another as comfortable, supportive, reinforcing, perhaps as being sociable and as showing that they are like-minded. Disagreements, on the other hand, are oriented to as being ‘uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, risking threats, insult, or offence’ (Pomerantz, 1984: 77). When a recipient’s agreement or disagreement with a prior assessment is due, any disagreement is normally marked: the co-participant will preface disagreement with delays such as no immediately forthcoming talk or indicators of reluctance such as ‘uh’ and ‘well’ used as prefaces or patterns of weak agreement followed by disagreement. More recently, Kotthoff (1993) has suggested that this may be moderated in that, once a dissent-turn sequence has been displayed, co-participants may in turn display concessions which result in the dispute being reframed.
- Kotthoff, H. (1993) ‘Disagreement and Concession in Disputes: On the Context Sensitivity
of Preference Structures’, Language in Society 22: 193–216.
- 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.
- Pomerantz, A. (1986) ‘Extreme Case Formulations: A Way of Legitimizing Claims’,
Human Studies 9: 219–29.
