The management of participants' epistemic positionings has been observed as essential for the organization and accomplishment of work activities in research settings (Goodwin, 2018). In workplace interaction and generally in conversation, knowledge domains are made relevant in courses of action as participants are continuously monitoring their relative epistemic status vis-à-vis each other (Heritage, 2012). Scientists anchor knowledge relations in expert-novice categories, but they also locally manage epistemic imbalances and construct expertise in interaction, as do other professionals (Harms et al., 2021). With an interest in the pedagogical dimension of scientific research work, this study investigates the interactional management of expertise in knowledge construction activities that take place in research group meetings. The focus is on instances where the participants make explicit claims of lack of knowledge (e.g., "I have to reveal my ignorance completely"), that is, epistemic disclaimers.Drawing on ethnomethodological and conversation analytic work, the analysis focuses on epistemic disclaimers in their sequential contexts, as well as the local management of expert-novice relations.The analyzed data is part of a microethnographical work that involved participant observation and video recordings at a research program in Chemistry at a Swedish university. The multimodal sequential analysis revealed epistemic disclaimers occurring in different interactional contexts, in terms of their position in the sequence and in turn construction units. With a focus on epistemic disclaimers that occur in first pair-parts, which are an under-examined phenomenon (Weatherall, 2011), the analysis explores how experienced researchers may employ disclaimers to frame and recast questions as genuine rather than known-answer questions. The results of the study thus evidence the interplay between downgrading epistemic stance and attributing rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge and scientific expertise. The paper also shows how multimodal practices are employed to project epistemic status (mostly gaze direction) and the ways in which participants are held accountable for epistemic positions that are built in the interaction's history. In the analyzed cases, epistemic disclaimers are used as resources for mobilizing participation, working to open the floor by positioning other co-participants as more knowledgeable, which is argued to be oriented to encouraging collaboration and to creating environments for joint construction of scientific knowledge. Finally, the study sheds light on ways in which pedagogical work is an "oriented-to" feature of social interaction that is managed in situated activities.
References:
Goodwin, C. (2018). Co-operative Action. Cambridge University Press.
Harms, P., Koole, T., Stukker, N., & Tulleken, J. (2021). Expertise as a domain of epistemics in intensive care shift-handovers. Discourse Studies, 23(5), 636–651.
Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 1–29.
Weatherall, A. (2011). I don't know as a Prepositioned Epistemic Hedge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 44(4), 317–337.
