Direct and indirect ways of managing epistemic asymmetries when eliciting memories

Val Williams; Joe Webb; Sandra Dowling; Marina Gall

doi:10.1177/1461445618802657

Direct and indirect ways of managing epistemic asymmetries when eliciting memories

Val Williams^*, Joe Webb, Sandra Dowling, Marina Gall

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

360 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article aims to explore how epistemic status is negotiated during talk about the life memories of one speaker. Direct questions which foreground ‘remembering’ can lead to troubled sequences of talk. However, interlocutors sometimes frame their first parts as ‘co-rememberings’, and the sequential positioning of these can be crucial to the outcome of the talk. We draw on almost 10 hours of video data from dementia settings, where memory is a talked-about matter. Our focus is on 30 sequences which are initiated with a question or other first part taking a K- stance, selecting one person as next speaker, and topically relating to the recipient’s past life. We show how Type Two knowables can be used alongside markers of tentativeness, to jointly construct the recipient’s epistemic primacy.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	199-215
Number of pages	17
Journal	Discourse Studies
Volume	21
Issue number	2
Early online date	15 Oct 2018
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445618802657
Publication status	Published - 1 Apr 2019

Bibliographical note

Biographical note Val Williams is a Disability Studies professor, who combines disability research with the systematic analysis of talk. She has previously published accounts of the fine-grained detail in conversations between people with intellectual disabilities and their support workers. Joe Webb is also a CA analyst, who has strong interests in the interactional consequences of questions, and in the application of Conversation Analysis to dementia talk. Marina Gall and Sandra Dowling are members of the team, who worked with disabled people to create practices which are better fitted to include them.

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the support given in analysis by our co-investigators Professors Charles Antaki and Celia Kitzinger, and to thank all the people with dementia and their supporters who took part in this research.

Keywords

Epistemics
epistemic primacy
co-remembering
dementia
questions
reminiscence
Type Two knowables
asymmetries in talk
support practices

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Cite this

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Direct and indirect ways of managing epistemic asymmetries when eliciting memories

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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Getting Things Changed: Tackling disabling practices: co-production and change

Dr Marina R Y Gall

Professor Val J Williams

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Direct and indirect ways of managing epistemic asymmetries when eliciting memories

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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Getting Things Changed: Tackling disabling practices: co-production and change

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Dr Marina R Y Gall

Professor Val J Williams

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