A cross-linguistic perspective on grammar and negative epistemics in talk-in-interaction

Lindström, Jan; Maschler, Yael; Doehler, Simona Pekarek

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2016.09.003

Cited by 31 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…The morphophonological reduction and lexicostructural consistency of chais pas, together with its low prosodic proeminence and with what grammarians call "semantic bleaching" (note that the chais pas is not treated by coparticipants as a claim of lack of knowledge) testify to the highly routinized nature of the construction (see Hopper & Traugott, 2003, on grammaticization). This in turn provides evidence that such routinized uses of chais pas are not restricted to functioning as epistemic markers or hedges as has been assumed for I don't know-type of constructions across several languages (see Scheibman, 2000;Weatherall, 2011, on English;Lindström et al, 2016, for a cross-linguistic overview). Rather, the uses discussed here pertain to the local management of the organizational infrastructure of social interaction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…For one thing, speakers may thereby accomplish precise interactional purposes in addition to claiming no knowledge (Beach & Metzger, 1997;Keevallik, 2011), such as resisting a line of questioning (Hutchby, 2002). For another thing, speakers may use the same expressions not as disclaims of knowledge but as epistemic stance markers or hedges (e.g., Maschler, 2017;Weatherall, 2011; for an overview, see Lindström, Maschler, & Pekarek Doehler, 2016), typically bearing morphophonological reduction (e.g., dunno; cf. Scheibman, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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At the Interface of Grammar and the Body:Chais pas(“dunno”) as a Resource for Dealing with Lack of Recipient Response

Doehler

2019

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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This article examines speakers' use of French chais pas ("dunno") when they find that their sequence-initial turn has not been responded to by their recipient (roughly: Speaker A: Maybe they're doing a master's degree; Speaker B: [no response]; Speaker A: Dunno). Two interactional workings are documented in this precise sequential location: Speakers use chais pas either for withdrawing their just-produced sequence-initial action, thereby canceling the relevance of a response or, on the contrary, for pursuing response while relaxing the preference for a precise type of response. Collection-based analysis shows that these uses differ in their embodied delivery, implementing distinct interactional workings with distinct sequential consequentialities. The findings add to our understanding of how grammar and the body interface in the course of the realtime production of turns and actions and provide evidence for the online malleability of action projection. Data are in French with English translations. Language is one among a range of resources that participants draw upon for the collaborative organization of social interaction (Goodwin, 1979; Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson, 1996; Sacks, 1992). Linguistic resources are "positionally sensitive" (Schegloff, 1996, p. 63), that is, the workings of grammatical constructions can be differentiated by reference to position in turn and sequence. These workings are complexly intertwined with participants' embodied conduct (Goodwin, 1979). Based on this intertwinedness of multiple (semiotic) resources, participants produce and understand actions in accountable ways within situated social interaction: "the resources of the language, the body, the environment of the interaction, and position in the interaction [are] fashioned into conformations designed to be, and to be recognizable by recipients as, particular actions" (Schegloff, 2007, p. xiv). Therefore, a fine-grained understanding of action formation and ascription calls for close scrutiny of how grammar, placement, and co-occurring embodied conduct interface in the course of the real-time production of turns and actions (Keevallik, 2013, 2018; Mondada, 2014). In this article I am interested in the in-principle possibility of grammar, position within turn and sequence, and co-occurring embodied conduct to be interrelated in systematic ways. By systematic ways, I mean the recurrent occurrence of grammar-position-body constellations for specifiable interactional purposes (see Goodwin, 2007; Streeck, 2009, on multimodal action packages; see also Goodwin, 2013). Based on an understanding of grammar as a set of emergent and adaptive resources that are instrumental in participants' dealing with the unfolding of social interaction in real time (

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

At the Interface of Grammar and the Body:Chais pas(“dunno”) as a Resource for Dealing with Lack of Recipient Response

Doehler

2019

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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“…Kääntä and Kasper 2018) and negative epistemic claims or formulations (e.g. Lindström, Maschler, and Pekarek Doehler 2016;Mondada 2011). In contrast to the entirely embodied trouble displays discussed below, students' verbal trouble displays make explicit that there is a problem of understanding relating to another participant's contribution.…”

Section: Verbal Displays Of Trouble In Understandingmentioning

confidence: 96%

‘Well let me put it uhm the other way around maybe’: Managing students’ trouble displays in the CLIL classroom

Aldrup

2019

Classroom Discourse

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“…© 2018. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved This domain, also labeled 'epistemics' (Heritage 2012;Lynch and Macbeth 2016;Lindström et al 2016), covers phenomena that are referred to as evidentiality, modality, mirativity, egophoricity, epistemic attitude, (inter)subjectivity, etc. Besides epistemics, 'stance' is regularly used as a cover term, as for example in Bergqvist (this volume).…”

Section: Introduction To the Concept Of Evidentialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Foolen

Hoop

Mulder

2018

Human Cognitive Processing

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Diverging subdivisions and some additional types of evidentiality have been suggested, in line with the distinctions that specific languages make. For example, inferential and assumed evidentiality can be distinguished, since inferences can be based on general or stored knowledge about the subject's habits, i.e. indirect evidence, or on perceptual, especially visual (i.e., direct) evidence (cf. Hengeveld and Dall'Aglio Hattnher 2015). Aikhenvald (2004: 2-3) argues that the difference between assumed and inferred evidentiality lies in the access to visual evidence in the case of the latter. An inferential evidential is "based on obvious evidence which can be easily observed (even if the event itself was not seen)" (Aikhenvald 2004: 3). Also, she notes a difference in the degree of reasoning involved. That is to say, "the more the speaker has to rely on reasoning based on knowledge or on common sense, the more chance there is that the assumed evidential will be used" (Aikhenvald 2004: 3). Müller (2013: 212) notes that inferential evidentiality can be distinguished from direct visual evidentiality because in the case of inferential evidentiality the event itself is not directly witnessed. Thus, in English, when a speaker finds John's wife's body, an inferential evidential expression can be used, such as John must have killed his wife. Also, the speaker may actually see the result of an event, and utter I see that John cleaned up the place. In this case I see is not an expression of direct but of indirect evidence, as it is the result of the event that is witnessed, but not the event itself. Gipper (this volume) argues that Yurakaré-shi has in fact properties of both direct and indirect evidentiality, whereas Zeisler (this volume) argues that the notion of 'direct' knowledge for immediately observed facts is not exactly applicable to the Tibetic marker ḥdug, for which reason she prefers to qualify it as 'weakly indirect'. Bergqvist (this volume) stresses the importance of access to the evidence. As he points out, not only the speaker's access plays a role in the meaning of evidentials, the hearer's access can play a role as well. In this view on evidentiality, notions such as 'subjectivity', 'intersubjectivity' and 'perspective' come into the picture in a natural way. Although some renowned specialists in the field have argued that only obligatory grammatical markers of evidentiality fall into the category of evidentiality in language (e.g., Aikhenvald 2004), many linguists nowadays take a broader perspective and also take lexical expressions into account. We concur with Marín Arrese's (2015: 212) assessment that "if we restrict the notion of evidentiality to cases of obligatory grammatical marking, we miss out on the expression of evidentiality in a significant number of languages, and we fail to adequately characterize and delimit the conceptual domain of evidentiality". The aim of the present volume is to provide empirical evidence for the existence of evidentiality across the board: not just in a subset of langua...

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A cross-linguistic perspective on grammar and negative epistemics in talk-in-interaction

Cited by 31 publications

References 40 publications

At the Interface of Grammar and the Body:Chais pas(“dunno”) as a Resource for Dealing with Lack of Recipient Response

At the Interface of Grammar and the Body:Chais pas(“dunno”) as a Resource for Dealing with Lack of Recipient Response

‘Well let me put it uhm the other way around maybe’: Managing students’ trouble displays in the CLIL classroom

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