The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation

Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities.

Demonstrates how we monitor others' rights to, and responsibilities for, knowledge in conversation, and their consequences for affiliation.

In conversation we treat each other as having rights and responsibilities to know certain information and observe each other for violations of this moral order. This book examines practices used in managing what we know, how we monitor one another's knowledge, and how this affects our affiliation with others.

Tanya Stivers is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a scientific staff member of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.Lorenza Mondada is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Lyon II, and Director of the ICAR Research Laboratory (CNRS, University of Lyon).Jakob Steensig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Introduction; 1. Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada and Jakob Steensig; Part I. Affiliational Consequences of Managing Epistemic Asymmetries: 2. The management of knowledge discrepancies and of epistemic changes in institutional interactions Lorenza Mondada; 3. Giving support to the claim of epistemic primacy: yo-marked assessments in Japanese Kaoru Hayano; 4. Morality and question design: 'of course' as contesting a presupposition of askability Tanya Stivers; 5. Addressing epistemic incongruence in question-answer sequences through the use of epistemic adverbs Trine Heinemann, Anna Lindström and Jakob Steensig; 6. The epistemics of make-believe Jack Sidnell; Part II. Epistemic Resources for Managing Affiliation and Alignment: 7. Territories of knowledge, territories of experience: empathic moments in interaction John Heritage; 8. The terms of not knowing and social affiliation Leelo Keevallik; 9. Proposing shared knowledge as a means of pursuing agreement Birte Asmuß; 10. Ways of agreeing with negative stance taking Auli Hakulinen and Marja-Leena Sorjonen; 11. Epistemics and embodiment in the interactions of very young children Mardi Kidwell; Part III. Toward a Theory: 12. Sources of asymmetry in human interaction: enchrony, status, knowledge and agency N. J. Enfield.