“Lovely”: turn-initial high-grade assessments in telephone closings

Abstract

Do high-grade assessments (such as “lovely” and “brilliant”) have a use in marking episodes in mundane conversation? Inspection suggests that closing sequences in telephone conversations, when they include such embedded actions as making arrangements, have a slot which can be filled by a turn-initial high-grade assessment. I suggest that the high-grade assessment makes a special display of resuming a closing which had been suspended. I make a link between marked resumption in such mundane closings and more institutional agenda-marking, and speculate that using a resumptive high-grade assessment might display a claim to `ownership' of the closedown sequence.