Lindwall2016

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Lindwall2016
BibType ARTICLE
Key Lindwall2016
Author(s) Oskar Lindwall, Gustav Lymer, Jonas Ivarsson
Title Epistemic status and the recognizability of social actions
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, action formation, conversation analysis, corresponding author, epistemic status
Publisher
Year 2016
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 18
Number 5
Pages 500–525
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1461445616657958
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
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Abstract

Although the production and recognition of social actions have been central concerns for conversation analysis (CA) from the outset, it has recently been argued that CA is yet to develop a systematic analysis of ‘action formation'. As a partial remedy to this situation, John Heritage introduces ‘epistemic status', which he claims is an unavoidable component of the production and recognition of social action. His proposal addresses the question how is social action produced and recognized? by reference to another question how is relative knowledge recognized? Despite the importance placed on the latter question, it is not clear how it is to be answered in particular cases. We argue that the introduction of epistemic status builds on a reformulation of the action formation problem that unnecessarily de-emphasizes the importance of the sequential environment. Our re-analyses of key sequences cast doubts on the empirical grounding of the epistemic program, and question whether the fundamental role of epistemic status has been convincingly demonstrated.

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