Respecifying Epistemics as Analytical Work

• In Event: 063 - Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Paper Session (one-hour). Ethnomethodological Studies of Work: Challenges, Practices, and Successes

Abstract

In the past decade, conversation analysts and sociolinguists have amassed a body of literature on the topic of epistemics in conversation. Epistemics has to do with the various interactional practices through which information is requested and conveyed. The most ambitious presentations on the subject treat epistemics not only as a topic to be addressed in the field of conversation analysis (CA), but also as a novel development that has opened up an entire field for research into the social organization and distribution of knowledge. Given this promise, the epistemics program (EP) ought to be a major resource for studies of work in the scientific, technological, educational, and legal professions, but as this paper argues, the program is beset by overgeneralized claims coupled with formal analyses that impose an abstract model on to the details of transcribed extracts from recorded conversations. A key aspect of EP analysis is the extraction and analysis of propositional contents from utterances embedded in analysis. As an alternative to the form of constructive analysis that pervades EP, this paper suggests that the extraction and isolation of statements, together with their tendentious analysis, is itself an organized practice worthy of further investigation in studies of work.

Author

• Michael Lynch, Cornell University