Part of
Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific ContextsEdited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
[Dialogue Studies 25] 2014
► pp. 139–156
Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
[Dialogue Studies 25] 2014
► pp. 139–156
Requesting help with null or limited knowledge
Entitlements and responsibility in emergency calls
The chapter deals with the issue of knowledge displays in conversation and the rights and obligations in social interaction connected to the fact of knowing something. My contribution has three main goals: first, it is a contribution to the study of the social distribution of knowledge in social interaction, in particular of “not knowing” where a display of knowledge is requested; second, it contributes to the study of the relations between request design and the display of commensurate knowledge that make the speaker fully entitled to make a request; finally, it is a contribution to the study of emergency calls, in particular with a focus on the relations between the terms of knowledge, the grounding of the request, and the provision of the service requested.
References
Baumgarten, Nicole, and Juliane House
2009 “I Think and I Don’t Know in English as Lingua Franca and Native English Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (5): 1184–1200. 
Beach, Wayne A., and Terri R. Metzger
1997 “Claiming Insufficient Knowledge.” Human Communication Research 23 (4): 562–588.
Curl, Tracy, and Paul Drew
2008 “Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41: 1–25.
Diani, Giuliana
2004 “The Discourse Functions of I Don’t Know in English Conversation.” In Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora, ed. by K. Aijmer, and A. Strenström, 157–171. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Drew, Paul
1992 “Contested Evidence in Courtroom Cross-examination: The Case of a Trial for Rape.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 470–520. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, Paul, and Traci Walker
2010 “Requesting Assistance in Calls to the Police.” In Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, ed. by M. Coulthard, and A. Johnson, 95–110. New York: Routledge.
González-Martínez, Esther
2008 “La réponse ‘Je ne sais pas’ lors d’une enquête sociale.” Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée 88: 19–41.
Grant, Lynn E
2010 “A Corpus Comparison of the Use of I Don’t Know by British and New Zealand Speakers.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2282–2296.
Heritage, John
2013 “Epistemics in Conversation.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers, 659–673. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heritage, John, and Steve Clayman
2010 “Calls for Emergency Service.” In Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions, ed. by John Heritage, and Steve Clayman, 53–100. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond
2005 “The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-Interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 68: 15–38.
Hutchby, Ian
2002 “Resisting the Incitement to Talk in Child Counselling: Aspects of the Utterance I Don’t Know.” Discourse Studies 4 (2): 147–168.
Kärkkäinen, Elise
2003 Epistemic Stance in English Conversation: A Description of its Interactional Functions, With a Focus on “I Think”. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
2006 “Stance Taking in Conversation: From Subjectivity to Intersubjectivity.” Text & Talk 26: 699–731.
Keevallik, Leelo
2011 “The Terms of Not Knowing and Social Affiliation.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 184–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Labov, William, and David Fanshel
1977 Therapeutic Discourse. Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.
Lee, Seung-Hee
2011a “Responding at a Higher Level: Activity Progressivity in Calls for Service.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 904–917.
2011b “Managing Nongranting of Customers’ Requests in Commercial Service Encounters.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 44 (2): 109–134.
Mushin, Ilana
2001 Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance: Narrative Retelling. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Pichler, Heike
2009 “The Functional and Social Reality of Discourse Variants in a Northern English Dialect: I DON’T KNOW and I DON’T THINK Compared.” Intercultural Pragmatics 6 (4): 561–596.
Raymond, Geoffrey
2003 “Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/no Interrogatives and the Structure of Responding.” American Sociological Review 68: 939–967.
Raymond, Geoffrey, and Don H. Zimmerman
2007 “Rights and Responsibilities in Calls for Help: The Case of the Mountain Glade Fire.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 40 (1): 33–61.
Rønneberg, Kari, and Jan Svennevig
2010 “Declining to Help: Rejections in Service Requests to the Police.” Discourse & Communication 4: 279–305.
Schegloff, Emanuel
2007 Sequence Organization in Conversation. Cambridge: CUP.
Scheibman, Joanne
2000 “I dunno. A Usage-Based Account of the Phonological Reduction of Don’t in American English Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (1): 105–124.
Sert, Olcay, and Steve Walsh
2013 “The Interactional Management of Claims of Insufficient Knowledge in English Language Classroom.” Language and Education 27 (6): 542–565.
Stivers, Tania, and Jeoffrey Robinson
2006 “A Preference for Progressivity in Interaction.” Language in Society 35 (3): 367–392.
Tsui, Amy B.M
1991 “The Pragmatic Functions of I Don’t Know.” Text 11 (4): 607–622.
Vinkhuyzen, Erik, and Margaret H. Szymanski
2005 “‘Would You Like to Do It Yourself?’ Service Requests and Their Non-granting Responses.” In Applying Conversation Analysis, ed. by K. Richards, and P. Seedhouse, 91–106. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Weatherall, Ann
2011 “I Don’t Know as a Prepositioned Epistemic Hedge.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 44 (4): 317–337.
Whalen, Marylin, and Don H. Zimmerman
1987 “Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 172–185.
1990 “Describing Trouble: Practical Epistemology in Citizen Calls to the Police.” Language in Society 19: 465–492.
Whalen, Jack, Don H. Zimmerman, and Marylin Whalen
1988 “When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis.” Social Problems 35: 335–362.
Zimmerman, Don H
1984 “Talk and its Occasion: The Case of Calling the Police.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Shiffrin, 210–228.
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
1992 “The Interactional Organization of Calls for Emergency Assistance.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 359–469. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Iversen, Clara & Heidi Kevoe‐Feldman
2024. The subjective and objective side of helplessness: Navigating between reassurance and risk management when people seek help for suicidal others. British Journal of Social Psychology 
Riou, Marine, Karim Tazarourte, Delphine Hugenschmitt, Christian Di Filippo & Pierre-Yves Gueugniaud
2023. Faire faire les gestes qui sauvent : requêtes des régulateurs pour guider les appelants dans des appels d’urgence médicale en France. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 35 ff.
Tennent, Emma
2021. ‘I’m calling in regard to my son’: Entitlement, obligation, and opportunity to seek help for others. British Journal of Social Psychology 60:3 ► pp. 870 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.