Fishing for information
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Fishing for information | |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Jason Turowetz (University of California, Santa Barbara) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2724-764X) |
| To cite: | Turowetz, Jason. (2023). Fishing for information. 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/7XYZ9 |
Fishing for information is a way that speakers indirectly solicit information from recipients. Pomerantz (1980) shows that speakers may fish for information through the practice of “telling my side”: the speaker reports their experience in an attempt to get the recipient to volunteer information to which the speaker has limited access. In doing so, they can be heard to make a tacit, off-record request for information (Heritage 2013: 374-375; see also Raymond & Stivers 2016). Consider the following example from Pomerantz (1980: 186-187):
(1) (Pomerantz 1980: 186-187) 01 G: ...dju j’see me pull us?= 02 S: -> =.hhh No:. I wz trying you all day. en the 03 -> line wz busy for like hours 04 G: Ohh:::::, ohh:::::, .hhhhhh We::ll, hhh I’m 05 g’nna c’m over in a little while help yer 06 brother o:ut 07 S: Goo[:d 08 G: [.hhh Cuz I know he needs some he::lp,
In this segment, S reports that she “wz trying” to reach G on the phone “all day,” and her “line wz busy for like hours.” In doing so, she is hearable as soliciting information from G about why her line was busy.
A “my side telling” has the following characteristic features (Pomerantz 1980: 190-195):
- A description of the speaker’s situatedness in relation to the information, i.e., how they found out about it.
- The speaker’s orientation to having less access to the information than the recipient. Pomerantz (1980) terms this indirect access type 2 knowledge, in contrast with direct “subject-actor access” possessed by the recipient. Type 2 events are similar to what Labov and Fanshel (1977) call B-events, i.e., events known to person B, who is asked to confirm person A’s candidate understanding of them. In Kamio’s (1997) terms, type 2 events are relatively distant from the speaker’s information domain and relatively close to that of the recipient. Heritage (2012, 2013) builds on this notion in classifying a speaker with type 2 knowledge as relatively less knowledgeable (in a K- epistemic position) relative to their recipient (in a K+ epistemic position).
- The recipient needs to search for an event that accounts for the speaker’s reported experience.
Pomerantz (1980: 197-198) suggests that by indirectly requesting information, speakers may orient to the dispreferred status of requests relative to [[Offer]|offers]] (Sacks, 1992: 207), i.e., of information.
Additional Related Entries:
Cited References:
Heritage, J. (2012). The epistemic engine: sequence organization and the territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 30-52.
Heritage, J. (2013). Epistemics in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 370-394). Blackwell Publishing.
Kamio, A. (1997). Territory of information. John Benjamins.
Labov, W., & Fanshel, L. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: psychotherapy as conversation. Academic Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1980). Telling my side: “limited access” as a “fishing” device. Sociological Inquiry, 50(3-4), 186-198.
Raymond, C. W., & Stivers, T. (2016). Off-record account solicitations: In Robinson, J.D. (Ed.). Accountability in social interaction, (pp. 321-353). Oxford University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation (Vols. 1 & 2). Blackwell Publishing.
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