Describing trouble: Practical epistemology in citizen calls to the police

In this article, we examine the way citizens' descriptions of troublesome occurrences in reports to emergency dispatch personnel are vulnerable to suspicion and doubt. The vulnerability of description in these cases involves callers' categorization of, visual or aural access to, and involvement in the reported “trouble.” It is through displays of what we term practical epistemology – displays of how one has come to know about a particular event – that these vulnerabilites emerge and are tested and negotiated in the request for and dispatch of emergency assistance. (Conversation analysis, language in institutional settings, pragmatics)

[1]  T. V. Dijk.  Handbook of discourse analysis , 1985 .

[2]  E. Schegloff.  Analyzing Single Episodes of Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation Analysis , 1987 .

[3]  R. Frankel.  “I wz wondering‐uhm could raid uhm effect the brain permanently d'y know?”: Some observations on the intersection of speaking and writing in calls to a poison control center , 1989 .

[4]  J. M. Atkinson.  Understanding formality: The categorization and production of “formal” interaction , 1982 .

[5]  C. D. Claiborn,et al.  Talk and Social Organization. , 1988 .

[6]  G. Button,et al.  Talk and Social Organisation , 1988 .

[7]  Jeffrey Alexander,et al.  The Micro-macro link , 1987 .

[8]  Michael Moerman.  Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis , 1987 .

[9]  D. Helm.  The Interactional order : new directions in the study of social order , 1989 .

[10]  E. Schegloff,et al.  Opening up Closings , 1973 .

[11]  G. Psathas.  Everyday language : studies in ethnomethodology , 1981 .

[12]  E. Schegloff.  Discourse as an interactional achievement : Some uses of "Uh huh" and other things that come between sentences , 1982 .

[13]  P. Ekman,et al.  Handbook of methods in nonverbal behavior research , 1982 .

[14]  Don Hzimmerman,et al.  On Conversation: The Conversation Analytic Perspective , 1988 .

[15]  E. Schegloff.  The routine as achievement , 1986 .

[16]  Harvey Sacks.  On the Analysability of Stories by Children , 1972 .

[17]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[18]  David Greatbatch,et al.  A turn-taking system for British news interviews , 1988, Language in Society.

[19]  E. Tiryakian,et al.  Studies in social interaction , 1972 .

[20]  Aaron V. Cicourel,et al.  The Interpenetration of Communicative Contexts: Examples from Medical Encounters , 1987 .

[21]  S. Clayman.  Generating news : the interactional organization of news interviews , 1987 .

[22]  Jim Schenkein.  Studies in the organization of conversational interaction , 1978 .

[23]  Marilyn R. Whalen,et al.  When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis , 1988 .

[24]  Deborah Tannen,et al.  Analyzing discourse : text and talk , 1982 .

[25]  Anita M. Pomerantz.  Giving a source or basis: The practice in conversation of telling ‘how i know’ , 1984 .

[26]  D. Schiffrin.  Meaning, form, and use in context : linguistic applications , 1984 .

[27]  Roy Turner,et al.  On a Conversational Environment for Equivocality , 1978 .

[28]  Jessie Bernard,et al.  Explorations in sociology and counseling , 1969 .

[29]  Marilyn R. Whalen,et al.  Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help , 1987 .

[30]  J. M. Atkinson.  Structures of Social Action: Contents , 1985 .