Epistemic Status
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Epistemic Status | |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | John Heritage (UCLA, USA) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8603-6447) |
| To cite: | Heritage, John. (2026). Epistemic Status. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: [ ] |
Epistemic status refers to the positioning in terms of knowledge or information of a person concerning some state of affairs relative to his or her co-participants in social interaction. The term suggests that, relative to others, a participant may be more (K+) or less (K-) knowledgeable in relation to almost any imaginable state of affairs.
Underlying the concept is the notion that persons possess ‘territories of knowledge’ (Kamio 1997; Labov and Fanshel 1977, see also Heritage 2011). Some of these territories may be singular and unique for example, personal memories, hopes, fears, expectations, umwelt knowledge concerning arrangements within rooms and houses, the behavior of relatives, pets, etc. Others may be shared with social groups and epistemic communities (Abbott 1988; Holzner 1968; Knorr-Cetina 1999) such as professions, trades, and hobby communities. And yet others may be shared in and through particular joint experiences, whether present (e.g., the weather outside right now), or past (e.g., escaping an earthquake). A critical feature of epistemic status is that it is recognized in common, as ‘common ground’ (Stalnaker 1978) and, just as importantly, is known by the parties to be shared as ‘common ground’.
The basic notion underling epistemic status was first described by Labov and Fanshel (1977: 100), who observed that knowledge may be conceptualized in terms of its relationship to speakers in terms of a five-fold classification.
[Labov and Fanshel 1977:100]
A-events: Known to A, but not to B.
B-events: Known to B, but not to A.
AB-events: Known to both A and B.
O-events: Known to everyone present.
D-events: Known to be disputable.
Figure 1 below depicts the classical Labov and Fanshel knowledge representation between two speakers, while in Figure 2 depicts a multiplication of relationships between hypothesized speakers to include knowledge that is known to A, B and C, as well as knowledge that is shared between A and B, but not C, and knowledge that is shared between B and C, but not A.
Figure 1 (left), Figure 2 (right)
The layout of epistemic status attributes in Figure 1 quite accurately models the deployment of the Japanese turn-final particles yo, ne and yone, in which yo indexes speaker-specific knowledge (A-events), while ne and yone index knowledge that is shared (AB-events) (Hayano 2011, 2013).
An alternative representation of epistemic status is provided by the Japanese linguist Akio Kamio (1997) who focuses on the relative aspect to knowledge or information. Consider the following sequence from Pomerantz (1980):
(1) [NB:II:2:R] (Pomerantz 1980: 195) 01 Nan: Hel↑lo:, 02 Emm: .hh HI::. 03 (.) 04 Nan: Oh:'I::: 'ow a:re you Emmah: 05 Emm: FI:NE yer LINE'S BEEN BUSY. 06 Nan: Yea:h (.) my u.-fuhh h-.hhhh my fa:ther's wife ca:lled me,h 07 .hhh So when she ca:lls me::,h .hh I always talk fer a lo:ng 08 ti:me cz she c'n afford it'n I ca:n't.hhh[hhh]°huh°] 09 Emm: [OH:]:::::]:=
Here Emma reports a state of affairs – a busy telephone signal, concerning which, at line 5, she suggests that she has limited knowledge (Pomerantz 1980). Her friend Nancy supplies the relevant information (lines 6-8). The relative knowledge states at line 5 might be represented, following Kamio (1997: 17), as depicted in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Information domain for “yer LINE’S BEEN BUSY” (Heritage 2013: 375)
Emma’s information state, as formulated in line 5, presents her knowledge as closer to the K- end of the knowledge spectrum, while formulating Nancy as very close to the K+ end. Emma knows no more than the fact that the line was busy, and she reflexively formulates Nancy as all but certain to know, and be able to describe, the state of affairs concerned.
As previously noted, it is critical that the parties’ relative epistemic status in reference to some state of affairs is jointly shared, and known to be so. This is made possible in part by the immense effort humans make to keep track of the knowledge and social affairs of others (Dunbar 2003; Sperber et al 2010), but also by the normative and sanctionable obligation to maintain congruency between epistemic status on the one hand, and epistemic stance on the other. This congruency generally enables speakers to trust that the stance towards some state of affairs that is expressed in an utterance is matched to the state of knowledge currently possessed by the speaker in question. Although this congruency may be broken from time to time, for example when speakers ask questions about matters about which they are in fact knowledgeable or, alternatively, claim authoritative knowledge about matters of which they are in fact ignorant. (Important exceptions to this generalization arise in specialized institutional contexts such as education, where teacher questioning is not designed to acquire information per se, but rather whether the student knows the answer [Sinclair & Coulthard 1975; McHoul 1978]. Similarly, in news interviews and courtroom discourse, questions are rarely asked from a position of ignorance, but are rather aimed at inducing the recipient affirm some state of affairs [Clayman and Heritage 2002; Drew 1992].) And, of course, speakers may believe in and claim knowledge of matters concerning which, it will turn out, they are ignorant.
In considering the overall relationship between epistemic status and epistemic stance, it is clear that epistemic status plays the dominant role. As Heritage (2012) demonstrated, regardless of the epistemic stance taken by a speaker, epistemic status will exert a controlling influence on the action ascribed to an utterance. Thus, as Labov and Fanshel (1977) were the first to note, when a K- speaker makes an assertion, such as “You know where he is then”, this will be heard to implement questioning despite the fact that the remark does not take the form of a question. Relatedly, as Robinson (2013) has shown epistemic status plays a central role in determining whether declarative repeats are heard as repair initiation or as challenges. In general, ‘declarative questions’ are the predominant form of questioning in English and many other languages (Bolden et al. 2023; Stivers 2010; Stivers et al. 2010). All are enabled by an orientation to the epistemic status of the speaker, and epistemic status is likely an essential resource for speakers of languages that lack linguistic markers of interrogativity, or whose markers are unreliable (Levinson 2012). Epistemic status, then, is an essential feature of action formation.
Epistemic status is significant for action formation in another important sense. During the past fifteen years, it has become apparent that rapid turn-transition from speaker to speaker that is witnessed around the world could not occur without the initiation of response planning by the recipient in the course of the current speaker’s turn (Levinson 2013, 2016; Levinson & Torreira 2015). Evidence is mounting that a key element in this planning is identifying the action of the current speaker long before that action, and the turn it is housed in, comes to completion (Barthel et al. 2017; Bögels et al. 2015; Gisladottir et al. 2018). Considering the process of distinguishing a statement-in-formation from a question-in-formation, it can be noted that, in a majority of the world’s languages, many of the linguistically identifying features of questioning such as final intonation contours and question particles occur at turn endings (Dryer 2013a, 2013b). That is, they emerge long after the time at which it had become necessary for the next speaker to identify the turn as an assertion or a question etc. as a condition for preparing an on-time response. Current research suggests that there is a concentration of multimodal signaling early in an incoming turn, suggestive of support for early action projection (Trujillo & Holler 2025). It may also be suggested (Heritage 2022) that, in addition to sequential context, orientation to epistemic status makes a significant contribution to early action ascription in relation to the incoming utterance, and to action formation in the response to it.
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