Epistemic Stance in Dialogue
Epistemic Stance in Dialogue

Author: Andrzej Zuczkowski

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9027265666

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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

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 9027253579

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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

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9781588114440

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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

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0190651458

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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

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9789027254085

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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

Published: 2014-11-15

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 9027269211

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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

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9789027253859

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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.

Questions and Epistemic Stance in Contemporary Spoken British English
Questions and Epistemic Stance in Contemporary Spoken British English

Author: Andrzej Zuczkowski

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-03-11

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1527567346

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This volume explores a model of epistemic stance, according to which speakers can communicate each single piece of information either as known/certain or uncertain or unknown. It presents a qualitative analysis of extracts from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 to support the idea that questions come from two distinct epistemic positions: the Unknowing and the Uncertain; this latter ranges along two poles: Not Knowing Whether and Believing. In the epistemic continuum, Unknowing questions express a lack of knowledge and range from open to closed and dual wh-questions. On the other hand, Uncertain questions express a lack of certainty and range from maximum uncertainty (Not Knowing Whether-questions advancing a doubt) to minimum uncertainty (Believing-questions advancing a supposition). Both Unknowing and Uncertain questions can be directed either at the answerer’s Knowing or Believing position, depending on their aim. The volume will appeal to scholars concerned with the topic of question design and epistemic stance from a theoretical and analytical perspective, as well as those interested in applying these findings in their teaching practice.

The Dialogical Mind
The Dialogical Mind

Author: Ivana Marková

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-09

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1107002559

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

The Art of Dialectic between Dialogue and Rhetoric
The Art of Dialectic between Dialogue and Rhetoric

Author: Marta Spranzi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 9027286841

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This book reconstructs the tradition of dialectic from Aristotle's Topics, its founding text, up to its "renaissance" in 16th century Italy, and focuses on the role of dialectic in the production of knowledge. Aristotle defines dialectic as a structured exchange of questions and answers and thus links it to dialogue and disputation, while Cicero develops a mildly skeptical version of dialectic, identifies it with reasoning in utramque partem and connects it closely to rhetoric. These two interpretations constitute the backbone of the living tradition of dialectic and are variously developed in the Renaissance against the Medieval background. The book scrutinizes three separate contexts in which these developments occur: Rudolph Agricola's attempt to develop a new dialectic in close connection with rhetoric, Agostino Nifo's thoroughly Aristotelian approach and its use of the newly translated commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes, and Carlo Sigonio's literary theory of the dialogue form, which is centered around Aristotle's Topics. Today, Aristotelian dialectic enjoys a new life within argumentation theory: the final chapter of the book briefly revisits these contemporary developments and draws some general epistemological conclusions linking the tradition of dialectic to a fallibilist view of knowledge.