Epistemic Stance in Dialogue

Epistemic Stance in Dialogue
Author: Andrzej Zuczkowski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027265666

This volume presents a theoretical and practical model for analysing epistemic stance in dialogues, i.e. the positions both epistemic (commitment) and evidential (source of information) which speakers take in the here and now of communication with regard to the information they are conveying and which they express through lexical and morphosyntactic means. According to the results of our studies of different types of corpora, these positions can be reduced to three basic ones: Knowing, Unknowing, Believing (KUB). In the first part of the book, we present the KUB model and its psychological and linguistic backgrounds. In the second part, we provide an exemplary application of the model, by presenting the qualitative and quantitative analysis of dialogues belonging to different genres and contexts. The volume is addressed to scholars concerned with the topical issues from a theoretical and analytical perspective.

Epistemic Stance in English Conversation

Epistemic Stance in English Conversation
Author: Elise Kärkkäinen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027253579

This book is the first corpus-based description of epistemic stance in conversational American English. It argues for epistemic stance as a pragmatic rather than semantic notion: showing commitment to the status of information is an emergent interactive activity, rooted in the interaction between conversational co-participants. The first major part of the book establishes the highly regular and routinized nature of such stance marking in the data. The second part offers a micro-analysis of I think, the prototypical stance marker, in its sequential and activity contexts. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and paying serious attention to the manifold prosodic cues attendant in the speakers' utterances, the study offers novel situated interpretations of I think. The author also argues for intonation units as a unit of social interaction and makes observations about the grammaticization patterns of the most frequent epistemic markers, notably the status of I think as a discourse marker.

Epistemic Stance in English Conversation

Epistemic Stance in English Conversation
Author: Elise Kärkkäinen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781588114440

This book is the first corpus-based description of epistemic stance in conversational American English. It argues for epistemic stance as a pragmatic rather than semantic notion: showing commitment to the status of information is an emergent interactive activity, rooted in the interaction between conversational co-participants. The first major part of the book establishes the highly regular and routinized nature of such stance marking in the data. The second part offers a micro-analysis of "I think," the prototypical stance marker, in its sequential and activity contexts. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and paying serious attention to the manifold prosodic cues attendant in the speakers utterances, the study offers novel situated interpretations of "I think." The author also argues for intonation units as a unit of social interaction and makes observations about the grammaticization patterns of the most frequent epistemic markers, notably the status of "I think" as a discourse marker.

Scientific Ontology

Scientific Ontology
Author: Anjan Chakravartty
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190651458

Though science and philosophy take different approaches to ontology, metaphysical inferences are relevant to interpreting scientific work, and empirical investigations are relevant to philosophy. This book argues that there is no uniquely rational way to determine which domains of ontology are appropriate for belief, making room for choice in a transformative account of scientific ontology.

Stancetaking in Discourse

Stancetaking in Discourse
Author: Robert Englebretson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027254085

This volume contributes to the burgeoning field of research on stance by offering a variety of studies based in natural discourse. These collected papers explore the situated, pragmatic, and interactional character of stancetaking, and present new models and conceptions of stance to spark future research. Central to the volume is the claim that stancetaking encompasses five general principles: it involves physical, attitudinal and/or moral positioning; it is a public action; it is inherently dialogic, interactional, and sequential; it indexes broader sociocultural contexts; and it is consequential to the interactants. Each paper explores one or more of these dimensions of stance from perspectives including interactional linguistics and conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, language description, discourse analysis, and sociocultural linguistics. Research languages include conversational American English, colloquial Indonesian, and Finnish. The understanding of stance that emerges is heterogeneous and variegated, and always intertwined with the pragmatic and social aspects of human conduct.

Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts

Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts
Author: Andrzej Zuczkowski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2014-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027269211

This volume is a collection of 18 papers on the communication of certainty and uncertainty. The first part introduces recent theoretical developments and general models on the topic and its relations with modality, subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, epistemicity, evidentiality, hedging, mitigation and speech acts. In the second part, results from empirical studies in medical and supportive contexts are presented, all of which are based on a conversational analysis approach. These papers report on professional dialogues including advice giving in gynecological consultations, breaking diagnostic bad news to patients, emergency calls, addiction therapeutic community meetings and bureaucratic-institutional interactions. The final part concerns the qualitative and quantitative analysis of corpora, addressing scientific writing (both research and popular articles) and academic communication in English, German, Spanish and Romanian. The collection is addressed to scholars concerned with the topical issues from a theoretical and analytical perspective and to health professionals interested in the practical implications of communicating certainty or uncertainty.

Talk and Practical Epistemology

Talk and Practical Epistemology
Author: Jack Sidnell
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027253859

Drawing on the methods of conversation analysis and ethnography, this book sets out to examine the epistemological practices of Indo-Guyanese villagers as these are revealed in their talk and daily conduct. Based on over eighty-five hours of conversation recorded during twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, the book describes both the social distribution of knowledge and the villagers' methods for distinguishing between fact and fancy, knowledge and belief through close analyses of particular encounters. The various chapters consider uncertainty and expertise in advice-giving, the cultivation of ignorance in an attempt to avoid scandal, and the organization of peer groups through the display of knowledge in the activity of reminiscing local history. An orienting chapter on questions and an appendix provide an introduction to conversation analysis. The book makes a contribution to linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis and cross-cultural pragmatics. The conclusion discusses the implications of the analysis for current understanding of practice, knowledge and social organization in anthropology and neighboring disciplines.

The Dialogical Mind

The Dialogical Mind
Author: Ivana Marková
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2016-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1107002559

Marková offers a dialogical perspective to problems in daily life and professional practices involving communication, care, and therapy.

Tag Questions in Conversation

Tag Questions in Conversation
Author: Ditte Kimps
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027264333

This monograph deals with variable tag questions. These are utterances with a variable interrogative tag, like It's peculiar writing, isn't it, and the semi-variable tag innit, such as Nice, innit. The aim is to provide a corpus-based, comprehensive semantic-pragmatic typology of British English tag questions. Compared to existing descriptions, the proposed typology is novel in three ways. Firstly, whereas almost all existing typologies are single-layered classifications, the functions of tag questions are categorized into two parallel dimensions of interpersonal meaning: the speech function and the stance layer. Secondly, semantic generalizations are proposed for clusters of grammatical, intonational and conversational properties. Thirdly, the bottom-up description is based on a sizeable amount of authentic, spontaneous conversations, which are analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively.