Epistemics in Interaction

Gordon (2009) has demonstrated that intertextuality (e.g., Bakhtin 1981, 1986; Kristeva 1986; Becker 1994; Hamilton 1996; Tannen 2007) and framing (e.g., Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974; Tannen & Wallat 1987/1993) are intrinsically intertwined. This study builds on this work, merging the study of intertextuality and framing with Raymond and Heritage’s (2006) analysis of epistemics in social relations, and simultaneously contributing to the study of ‘intertextual identity construction’ (Hamilton 1996) and ‘epistemic discourse analysis’ (van Dijk 2013). I demonstrate how intertextual ties, specifically media references (to movies, TV shows, songs, videogames, and online memes), contribute to epistemic management and frame shifts, which is conducive to group identity construction in ‘epistemic ecologies’ (C. Goodwin 2013).

The analysis focuses on five conversations of seven hours among ten American friends in their mid-twenties. These data include 116 media references across the five interactions, where speakers use repeated words, phrases, and phonetic and paralinguistic features appropriated from media texts.

Expanding on Gumperz’s (1977, 1982) work on contextualization cues, I demonstrate how these speakers use vowel lengthening, loudness, pitch shifts, laughter, smile voice, regional and foreign accents, singing, and creaky voice to signal media references in talk. I also show that speakers primarily demonstrate recognition of media references through laughter and participating in play frames, and that repetition or explicit affirmation also occasionally demonstrate recognition. I argue that and demonstrate how media references often serve to remedy epistemic imbalances and simultaneously manage frames, thereby negotiating interactional dilemmas (M. Goodwin 1996). Building on Gordon's (2009) understanding of what Goffman (1974) refers to as laminated frames, I show how two kinds of frame laminations are constructed and interrelated in play frames around media references: overlapping (two frames at once) and embedded (a specific frame within a more general frame). Through such play frames, speakers rekey, reframe (Tannen 2006), and re-adjust the epistemic territory of conversation and ultimately construct group identities as speakers with shared experiences. This study demonstrates how shared prior texts that are referenced by a group of people, such as media references, are used as a resource for managing epistemics, shifting frames, and identity construction.

Using a social-interactional perspective on second language learning— founded on a conversation analytic (CA) perspective on social interaction as structured—this thesis investigates second language learning (Finnish or Swedish) in bilingual (Finnish-Swedish) educational settings. Employing CA, the three studies presented in this thesis provide detailed analyses of second language learning in-and-through interaction and discuss both technical
and methodological implications of using video and CA in the study of learning in interaction. The aim of this thesis is to describe and understand practices used to perform social actions that participants orient to as second
language learning. The focus is on practices that participants—themselves—orient to as doing second language learning and on how these practices are structured and sequentially organized in social interaction. In other words,
learning is approached as practices that participants use to perform second language learning as situated actions. This thesis responds to the need for a better understanding of how participants actually do second language learning, and how it is structured and organized in talk-in-interaction. The empirical material consists of video recordings of various bilingual educational settings. These settings include participants’ (7–16 year-old children) everyday at school both in- and outside of the classrooms. The first study discusses three approaches on data construction that emerge from the body of CA studies on learning in interaction and how they affect the subsequent analysis, results, and understanding of learning in interaction. The underlying interests of these studies influence data construction, which, in turn, affects possible analyses. There is considerable variation in the aspects that datasets focus on: an emphasis on setting, participant, or content projects the analytic emphasis. Hence, it is important to be aware of and address this relation between data construction and analysis. The second and third study built on these findings to analyze how participants orient to their own and other’s second language knowledge in social interaction. The studies employ CA’s framework of epistemics in interaction to capture participants’ management of the dynamic epistemic relationships regarding second language knowledge in the production and recognition of second language learning as social action. The second study focuses on situations in which code-switching is not used in an attempt to solve the second language learner’s problems of understanding the second language and current assignment. The aim is to investigate participants’ interactional
management of one another’s knowledge regarding the second language—and the current assignment—when maintaining intersubjectivity and doing second language learning. The study shows that the use of the second language in resolving troubles with intersubjectivity may lead participants to act on diverse second language knowledge and diverse possible understandings regarding the assignments. The use of the second language may result in expanded epistemic discrepancies, as well as restrict doing second language learning on conceptual knowledge, for example, word-meanings. Instead, the participants agree on a minimally required epistemic balance as a way to move on. Building on the understanding of management of dynamic epistemic relationships in situations where participants orient towards doing second language learning, the third study investigates a specific practice— incongruent interrogatives—and how peers use this practice to perform second language learning. The findings indicate that participants—peers—use incongruent interrogatives to initiate instructional sequences and propose epistemically asymmetric positions as participants co-construct situated roles as second language teacher and second language learner as part of doing second language learning. Hence, all studies contribute to the development of an empirical analysis of second language learning as identifiable interactional practices that participants use to perform second language learning as action. These practices are not independent of other practices for maintaining intersubjectivity and meaning-making (such as repair/correction). The practices for doing second language learning and maintaining intersubjectivity are, instead, better understood as co-operating. Doing learning is concerned with instruction and a mutual orientation towards changing a participant’s knowledge of an oriented-to learning object, whereas the management of epistemic relationships, repair, and other practices for meaning-making are resources for participants to establish and maintain a shared understanding of their joint activities, including learning. In sum, the thesis contributes to the development of using CA for the analysis and documentation of participants’ methods and practices for doing learning as observable interactional phenomena that participants actively relate to.

The focus of this article was to better understand the management of participants’ L2 knowledge in a communicative L2 program—that is, to better understand how participants negotiate rights and responsibilities regarding knowledge of the learning objects that are oriented to when engaging in doing L2 learning. The study presented here can not draw very generalized conclusions, because of a limited set of examples offered in the analysis, and because of only studying one communicative L2 context. However, the findings are based on the larger body of analysed material, but they are exemplified through the three excerpts.

The management of L2 knowledge in the context under scrutiny seems to be smooth when the task and/or content is partially familiar to the children, and when they are situated in the context then and there. However, L2 learners bring in a special set of knowing and not knowing to which all participants need to be sensitive to maintain intersubjectivity (cf. Schegloff, 2000). Therefore, may the teacher’s use of the L2 when resolving the children’s problems of understanding the L2 bring into the situations added epistemic domains that the participants need to be aware of. It appears that the intricate linguistic context and epistemic circumstances regarding who knows what regarding the L2 and the content require participants (both K+ and K-) to be vigilant regarding the management of epistemic congruence, epistemic access and rights to knowledge related to the epistemic domains of the L2 and the current activity.

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resources used for coding agreements in Alto Perené (Arawak) conversation. The study draws on the anthropological tradition of conversation analysis-informed ethnographies. The investigation of agreeing responses is limited to those which allow a projectedly 'knowing', or K-plus, participant to raise his or her epistemic status from the sequentially second position. It is shown that Alto Perené K-plus response formats include the evaluative property word kametsari 'good' with an intensifier and/or upgraded prosody, argument focus structures, two polarity verbs ari 'it is the case' and omapero 'it is true', and the verb ñakiro 'as you can see'. This analysis demonstrates a relationship between the Alto Perené practices of expressing K-plus agreements and the collateral effects arising from the particular meanings and functions of structures which are used for accomplishing an agreeing action.

In discourse participants ascribe multi-layered, at times contradictory meaning to people, institutions or terms. This chapter presents the microsociological contextualization analysis, which traces how participants of interactions through indexical practices refer to contexts they consider relevant. An analysis of a panel discussion shows how participants in doing so not only speak for themselves as particular people, but as representatives of positions in discourse. At the same time, the analysis shows that positioning of utterances and people depend on the specific sequential context of interaction. Interactants negotiate positions, relations of power and attributes of a “Bologna discourse”, yet participants are unable to elude entirely from what has been said before and elsewhere. The analysis shows how in specific situated interactions participants, on the one hand, attempt to fixate discourse and people within a particular territory of knowledge. On the other hand, resisting practices undermine fixation.

Using the  rst language (L1) to solve problems in understanding the second language (L2) may be bene cial for L2 learning. However, the overuse of L1 may deprive L2 learners of exposure to the L2. It appears that the question is not whether to use L1 or L2; it is when and how each language can be used to support L2 learning. This study focuses on situations in L2 education in which L1 is not used in an attempt to solve the L2 learner’s problems of understanding the L2 and the current assignment. The aim is to investigate what role participants’ management of each other’s L2 knowledge plays in maintaining intersubjectivity and doing L2 learning in these situations. The results show that participants may act on diverse L2 knowledge and diverse possible understandings regarding the assignments and that the use of L2 risks expanding these epistemic discrepancies. Using L2 also appears to restrict doing L2 learning on conceptual knowledge, for example, word-meanings. The participants agree on a minimally required epistemic balance as a way to move on. The use of L1 as needed in these situations, as a resource for meaning-making, may be bene cial for doing L2 learning.

This conversation analytic study describes the interactional uses of ciò [ʧɔ], a pragmatic particle that is used both in the regional Italian spoken in Veneto (a region of northeastern Italy) and in Trevigiano (Trevixàn [trevi’zaŋ]), an Italo-Romance variety widely used in the Treviso area. Preliminary results show that ciò (derived from the imperative form of the verb ciór/tòr ([ʧor]/[tɔr] ‘to take’) is mostly used as a preface in responsive position and is frequently preceded by the particle eh. In our data, the (eh) ciò-prefaced turns are designed as general, objective, obvious contributions through which participants provide a wider perspective on the topic while treating the preceding talk as defective or not dealing with relevant aspects of the subject under discussion. This study contributes to the documentation of linguistic forms that are used by speakers of an Italo-Romance variety as conversational resources in talk-in-interaction.