The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation

This book demonstrates how we monitor others' rights to, and responsibilities for, knowledge in conversation, and their consequences for affiliation.

In conversation we treat each other as having rights and responsibilities to know certain information and observe each other for violations of this moral order. This book examines practices used in managing what we know, how we monitor one another's knowledge, and how this affects our affiliation with others.Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities.