What is it about?
Research has demonstrated how speakers attend closely to the knowledge claims they and others make and how this shapes interaction. This paper uses recent writing on epistemics in conversation analysis to explore how interviewers and interviewees attend to knowledge claims. Interviewees are recruited to represent a category identified by researchers, and are assumed to have greater knowledge relative to the research topic as compared to interviewers. In turn, interviewers typically demonstrate that they are eager learners about others’ experiences, perceptions and beliefs and so forth. This paper examines sequences from research interviews to focus on the fine-grained work involved in asking questions and making knowledge claims within interviews.
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Why is it important?
Epistemics provides a way to examine how speakers’ orientations to the knowledge claims made in qualitative interviews are central to the interactional work of conducting interviews.
Perspectives
The credibility of findings from qualitative interview studies is a frequently discussed topic in methodological literature. By looking at the interactional features of knowledge claims in interview talk, researchers can examine how interviewers and interviewees attend to the credibility of claims within the interview itself.
Dr Kathryn Roulston
University of Georgia
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This page is a summary of: Qualitative interviewing and epistemics, Qualitative Research, August 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1468794117721738.
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