Raymond2018

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Raymond2018
BibType ARTICLE
Key Raymond2018
Author(s) Geoffrey Raymond
Title Which epistemics? Whose conversation analysis?
Editor(s)
Tag(s) Background knowledge, EMCA, epistemics, relative access and rights to knowledge, sequence organization, suspicion, trust, epistemic status, epistemic stance
Publisher
Year 2018
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 20
Number 1
Pages 57–89
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1461445617734343
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In a Special Issue of Discourse Studies (2016) titled ‘The Epistemics of Epistemics', contributing authors criticize Heritage's research on participants' orientations to, and management of, the distribution of (rights to) knowledge in conversation. These authors claim (a) that the analytic framework Heritage (and I) developed for analyzing epistemic phenomena privileges the analysts' over the participants' point of view, and (b) rejects standard methods of conversation analysis (CA); (c) that (a) and (b) are adopted in developing and defending the use of abstract analytic schemata that offer little purchase on either the specific actions speakers accomplish or the understanding others display of them; and (d) that, by virtue of these deficiencies, claims about the systematic relevance of epistemic phenomena for talk-in-interaction breach long-standing norms regarding the relationship between data analysis and generalizing claims. Using a collection of excerpts bearing on the import of epistemics for action formation and action sequencing, I demonstrate that these claims are patently false and suggest that they reflect the authors' effort to recast CA as a kind of fundamentalist enterprise. I then consider excerpts from a second collection (of occasions involving the pursuit of one party's ‘suspicions' about another's alleged misdeeds) to illustrate how the form of social organization described by Heritage can be used to explicate other phenomena that depend on systematic alterations to its basic features. In conclusion, I suggest that CA's success in enhancing our grasp of the organization of talk-in-interaction derives from its unique commitment to both generalization and context specificity, collections and single cases, findings plus a continual openness to the ‘something more' that each particular case can provide.

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