Heritage2024b

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Heritage2024b
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Heritage2024b
Author(s) John Heritage
Title The Epistemics of Epistemics: Validating Claims about Epistemic Stance in Conversation Analysis
Editor(s) Jeffrey D. Robinson, Rebecca Clift, Kobin H. Kendrick, Chase Wesley Raymond
Tag(s) EMCA, Epistemics, Epistemic stance, Epistemic status, Recipient design
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year 2024
Language English
City Cambridge
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 419-451
URL Link
DOI 10.1017/9781108936583.016
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis
Chapter 16

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Abstract

The study of epistemic issues in conversation focuses on the knowledge claims that interactants assert, contest, and defend in turns at talk and sequences of interaction. Epistemic issues permeate all the topics that conversation analysts study and are central to ‘recipient design’ – the ways in which speakers design their talk to accommodate the specifics of the context and the particular others who are their interlocutors. However, the study of epistemics is complicated by the fact that CA methodology permits the attribution of subjective knowledge to participants as a part of the analytic process only if the attribution is grounded in the data of interaction. While this stipulation has tended to inhibit research on epistemics in the past, the development of the notion of epistemic stance has enabled researchers to focus on how persons present themselves as more or less knowledgeable, and have those claims upheld or contested by others. This chapter identifies and illustrates seven sources of evidence that can be used, separately and in combination, to ground analytical claims about epistemic stance and status in conversational interaction. The analysis of epistemics is shown to have deep continuities with general conversation analytic procedures used across the field.

Notes