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Prosodic features of bad news and good news in conversation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Jeremy Freese  and
Douglas W. Maynard
Jeremy Freese
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, jfreese@indiana.edu, dmaynard@ucs.indiana.edu
Douglas W. Maynard
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, jfreese@indiana.edu, dmaynard@ucs.indiana.edu
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Abstract

Recent work suggests the importance of integrating prosodic research with research on the sequential organization of ordinary conversation. This paper examines how interactants use prosody as a resource in the joint accomplishment of delivered news as good or bad. Analysis of approximately 100 naturally occurring conversational news deliveries reveals that both good and bad news are presented and received with characteristic prosodic features that are consistent with expression of joy and sorrow, respectively, as described in the existing literature on prosody. These prosodic features are systematically deployed in each of the four turns of the prototypical news delivery sequence. Proposals and ratifications of the valence of a delivery are often made prosodically in the initial turns of the prototypical four-turn news delivery, while lexical assessments of news are often made later. When prosody is used to propose the valence of an item of news, subsequent lexical assessments tend to be alignments with these earlier ascriptions of valence, rather than independent appraisals of the news. (Bad news, good news, conversation analysis, prosody, sequencing).

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 1998 , pp. 195 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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