The notion of linguistic stance as a non-grammaticalized form of evidentiality is here explored through an investigation of reported speech in English interaction. Reported speech is found to be one of a variety of resources with which speakers lay claim to epistemic priority vis-à-vis recipients. Such resources are not identifiable as stance markers independently of the sequential contexts in which they appear; sequential position is shown to be central in providing at once a constraint on what can be said and a resource to exploit in saying it. Resources dependent on sequential position to index stance are deemed to be interactional evidentials to distinguish them from the well-documented stand-alone evidentials. Interactional and stand-alone evidentials, as forms of deixis, are directed to the orientations of epistemic authority and accountability respectively; their distinct means of marking evidentiality are grounded in the motivation to be explicit with regard to accountability and inexplicit with regard to authority.

One aspect of the relationship between meaning and interaction is explored here by taking the English particle actually, which is characterized by flexibility of syntactic position, and investigating its use in a range of interactional contexts. Syntactic alternatives in the form of clause-initial or clause-final placement are found to be selected by reference to interactional exigencies. The temporally situated, contingent accomplishment of utterances in turns and their component turnconstructional units shows the emergence of meaning across a conversational sequence; it reveals syntactic flexibility as both a resource to be exploited for interactional ends and a constraint on that interaction.*

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Several of the contributions to the Lynch, et al. (2016) special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is "routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us" (Macbeth and Wong, 2016: 585-6). Here we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognisable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and methodincluding the relationship between position and composition, and the making of collectionsas these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch, et al. special issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the special issue, including the alleged 'over-hearer's' writing of metrics, the provision of so-called 'alternative' analyses, and the supposed 'crafting' of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch's (2016: 18) more general assertion that CA has recently been experiencing a "rapprochement" with what he disparagingly refers to as the "juggernaut" of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The paper as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced "at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail," conversation-analytic findings-including its work in epistemics-are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be-and indeed continues to be-a mutually beneficial one.

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