Judgements of taste are an intrinsic part of everyday conversational interactions: people make assessments and agree and disagree with them as a core part of how they participate in activities, create and share knowledge, and manage their relationships with one another. However, these conversational assessments can seem resistant to some forms of analysis in ways that are summed up neatly in the Scholastic idiom "there's no accounting for taste". This paper approaches the difficulty of analysing judgements of taste in dialogue by looking at them in terms of the pragmatics of talk-in-interaction. An as-yet-unanalysed example of a conversation about an artwork is drawn from Anita Pomerantz' seminal Conversation Analytic (CA) paper on conversational assessments, and examined in order to build up a picture of the mechanisms people use when making aesthetic assessments. This analysis suggests that seemingly high-level aesthetic judgements are accomplished using the same ordinary mechanisms of conversational assessment ubiquitous in everyday talk. Some curious features of topic shifting within assessments are discussed, highlighting some methodological issues for this use of CA, and further research into naturalistic aesthetic assessment is proposed.

1. The Pragmatics of Aesthetic Assessment in
Conversation
Saul Albert & Patrick G.T. Healey
Queen Mary University of London
saul.albert@eecs.qmul.ac.uk
pat.healey@eecs.qmul.ac.uk
19/09/2012

2. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?

3. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
(...)
.
D: hhh Well I don't I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.

4. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?

5. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
.
D: hhh Yes I do like it=

6. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
.
D: hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=

7. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
.
D: hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=

8. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
.
D: hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
(...)
.
D: hhh Well I don't I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.

9. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
.
D: hhh Yes I do like it=
D: =although I rreally::=
C: =Dju make it?
(...)
.
D: hhh Well I don't I'm not a great fan of this
type of a:rt.

10. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?

11. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.

12. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?

13. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.

14. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida, who,

15. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida,[ who,
.
D: hhh
D: Oh that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=

16. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida,[ who,
.
D: hhh
D: Oh [that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C: Oh
A: Ye:h

17. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida,[ who,
.
D: hhh
D: Oh [that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C: Oh
A: Ye:h
D: [ Ya:h.
A: Right.

18. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
C: =Dju make it?
.
A: No We bought it, It's a hh a Mary Kerrida print.
D: 0:h (I k-)=
A: =Dz that make any sense to you?
C: Mn mh. I don' even know who she is.
A: She's that's, the Sister Kerrida,[ who,
.
D: hhh
D: Oh [that's the one you to:ld me you bou:ght.=
C: Oh
A: Ye:h
D: [ Ya:h.
A: Right.
(1.0)

19. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,

20. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)

21. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm

22. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: Right.
(1.0)
A: It's worth something,
(1.0)
A: There's only a hundred of'm
(0.5)
D: Hmm
(...)

23. Evaluation of A's new artwork (JS:I. -1) (Pomerantz, 1984)
A: D'yuh li:ke it?
(...)
D: Yih d-know why I don't go fer this type of uh:
art, Becuz it it strikes me ez being the
magazine adverti:sement ty:pe. Which some
uh-uh some a' them are really great. But tuhm
I-my, taste in art is for the more uhit-t-treh-
it tends tuh be realistic.

24. Parameter shifts in this evaluation:
the authorship of the print,
the fame of the author (to co-participants),
the monetary value of the print,
the scarcity of the print,
prior knowledge of the purchase and its authorship
the correct spelling of the word Life in the print
the degree to which the print is realistic, and
the degree to which the print resembles a magazine advert.

25. Conventional approaches to aesthetics

26. Conventional approaches to aesthetics
Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),

27. Conventional approaches to aesthetics
Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
historical context (Kristeller, 1951),

28. Conventional approaches to aesthetics
Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
institutional context (Dickie, 1984),

29. Conventional approaches to aesthetics
Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).

30. Conventional approaches to aesthetics
Physical qualities of objects (Greenberg, 1939),
historical context (Kristeller, 1951),
institutional context (Dickie, 1984),
social/interpersonal relations (Bourriaud, 2002).
(Corris, 2006)
Such social eects are generally demonstrated rhetorically.

31. Sister Corita Kent's Life

32. A conversation about Jackson Pollock
Mark Last time I went to the unclear was the school one pause
Unknown Went to the Royal Academy when I was doing my 'O' Levels,
unclear pause it was a Jackson follow up it was about,
ambulance was about twelve foot by twelve foot, it was literally
splodges of paint all over the fucking place, it was horrible,
unclear you can actually buy them at the Royal Academy, you
can't buy them at unclear, but he was asking a hundred thousand
pounds for it, I couldn't believe it, a trained monkey could of
fucking painted that pause unclear
Mark Well that, it probably is.
Stuart Jackson unclear is a monkey at London Zoo.
Mark All you have to do is get one mug buy it, too buy it, he's made
ain't he, ah? pause dur=5
Mark I mean pause see why they call people like Constable, Rembrandt
a great artist unclear
Unknown I never see how they can call anybody like unclear
Mark About Picasso a great artist
Stuart Na, I don't know unclear
Mark Its just pause crap

33. References I
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Michael Corris. The Dialogical Imagination : The Conversational Aesthetic of Conceptual Art. In David
Hopkins, editor, Avant Garde Critical Studies, pages 301310. Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2006.
G Dickie. The art circle: a theory of art. Haven, Cambridge, 1984.
Clement Greenberg. Avant-garde and kitsch. Partisan Review, pages 113, 1939.
Paul Oskar Kristeller. The modern system of the arts: A study in the history of aesthetics part I.
Journal of the History of Ideas, 12(4):496527, 1951.
DW Maynard. Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships. Social Psychology
Quarterly, 47(4):301316, 1984.
A Pomerantz. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn
shapes. In J Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, editors, Structures of social action: Studies in
Conversation Analysis, chapter 4, pages 57102. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984.
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Stephen C. Levinson. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.