Doing Epistemics: Knowledge in Action
| Number: | P87 |
| Organizer: | te Molder, Hedwig |
| Co-Organizer: | |
| Abstract: | |
| This panel focuses on how knowledge figures in social interaction, and the way it is negotiated and managed in relation to participants’ rights and responsibilities. Seminal work by John Heritage and Geoff Raymond (2005) shows that speakers unavoidably position themselves regarding the knowledge they and their recipients can and should have over a certain matter, and how recipients are held accountable accordingly. Conversely, recipients may renegotiate these attributions and for example resist the relatively inferior rights ascribed to them. Epistemics-in-interaction refers to participants’ methods for claiming, deferring or presupposing knowledge rights and responsibilities, thereby enabling a further plethora of actions. Epistemic issues that would traditionally be understood as individual-cognitive are thus examined for their interactional exploitation (see also Te Molder and Potter 2005). This panel presents four papers that show how knowledge in different contexts is built up, attributed and denied as a principal part of the shaping of socio-epistemic relations and the formation of identities. It discusses different grammatical resources such as tag questioning and yes-no interrogatives that speakers exploit to make recognizable under which terms recipients can and should respond, and compares the role of different languages therein. Through analysis in a variety of broader contexts (e.g. media interviews, mealtime conversations) this panel shows that the practical management of epistemic issues as embodied in a range of interactional resources is a central feature of social action. The panel is related to Panel 38, Knowledge in Social Interaction: Rights and Responsibilities (organizers: Jack Sidnell and John Heritage), and will be scheduled as such. |
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