2134/10861
Charles Antaki
Charles
Antaki
Affiliative and disaffiliative candidate understandings
Loughborough University
2012
Affiliative
Candidate understandings
Conversation analysis
Deontic
Disaffiliative
Epistemic
Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified
2012-11-06 09:29:13
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Affiliative_and_disaffiliative_candidate_understandings/9477458
A listener can offer an interpretation (can give a ‘candidate understanding’) of what a speaker
is currently saying. I distinguish between, on the one hand, proposing a candidate understanding
that solves a manifest problem by offering new, relevant information; and, on the other hand,
proposing a candidate understanding that does not seem to relate to any obvious obscurity in
what the speaker is saying, and only offers material that the speaker clearly knows, or ought
to know. Both kinds are interruptions to the progressivity of the speaker’s project, but they
differ qualitatitively. I argue that the former is affiliative and the latter disaffiliative, insofar as the
latter calls attention to, and therefore invites correction or abandonment of, what the speaker
is doing. I discuss what such a move might serve, and show how making it involves epistemic and
deontological rights.