September 25, 2020 Journal article Open Access

Lynch, Michael

Citation Style Language JSON Export

{
  "publisher": "Zenodo", 
  "DOI": "10.5281/zenodo.4050549", 
  "container_title": "Ethnographic Studies", 
  "title": "The inference making machine meets the epistemic engine", 
  "issued": {
    "date-parts": [
      [
        2020, 
        9, 
        25
      ]
    ]
  }, 
  "abstract": "<p>This paper discusses a lecture by Harvey Sacks on &lsquo;The Inference-Making Machine&rsquo;, originally delivered in 1964 and included in the posthumously published collection of his transcribed lectures, and then critically juxtaposes Sacks&#39; analysis with recent work in sociology and linguistics on the topic of &lsquo;epistemics&rsquo; in conversation. Sacks&#39; lecture discusses an extract from a phone call in which the caller relates a story about a domestic difficulty, and the recipient (an employee of a suicide prevention center, who was unacquainted with the caller) admonishes the caller for not telling the whole story and formulates the missing detail. Sacks makes a series of observations about the practical reasoning the social service agent uses to infer the missing detail. His analysis contrasts with that of some recent studies that assign higher &lsquo;epistemic status&rsquo; to speakers who present first-hand as opposed to second-hand accounts of the events in assertions, assessments and stories. The present paper uses the comparison with Sacks&#39; analysis to extend a recent dispute about &lsquo;epistemic&rsquo; analyses of conversation, and also examines an instance from a recent publication on police interrogations of suspects also to question the way professional sociolinguistic analysts attribute &lsquo;epistemic status&rsquo; to participants in conversational exchanges.</p>", 
  "author": [
    {
      "family": "Lynch, Michael"
    }
  ], 
  "page": "143-160", 
  "volume": "17", 
  "note": "+Sprache: eng.", 
  "type": "article-journal", 
  "id": "4050549"
}