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Part of
Identity Struggles: Evidence from workplaces around the world
Edited by Dorien Van De Mieroop and Stephanie Schnurr
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 69] 2017
► pp. 95–124

Chapter 6
Who’s the expert?

Negotiating competence and authority in guided tours

Guided tours are a “perspicuous setting” (Garfinkel & Wieder 1992) both for the study of asymmetries in professional contexts of interaction as well as for the analysis of how participants negotiate identities, categories and expertise. At first glance, the categorial distinction between “guide” and “guided” participants appears to be clear-cut. However, analyses of video recorded tours taking place in various sites show that the taken-for-granted authority, expertise and thus identity of the “guide” is repeatedly challenged by his or her co-participants. Based on conversation analytic methods, in this chapter we focus on sequences of interaction in which the participants compete for epistemic authority. We show how such competition emerges, how participants handle it, and how it is eventually solved.

Keywords: social interaction, conversation analysis, epistemics, membership categories, guided tours
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Unpacking the notion of identity
  • Guided tours: “Knowledgeable guide” and “unknowing guided”?
  • Claiming knowledge in first position
  • Claiming knowledge in second position
    • Guided participants responding to the guide’s emerging projections
    • Completion of recognizably “incomplete” turns
    • Early completion in overlap
    • Exploiting ongoing projections: Competing continuations of the guide’s turn
    • Continuing after the end of a sequence initiated by the guide
    • Competing for the right to extend the explanation
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.69.06des
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[no author supplied]
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