CIECS   20730
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES Y ESTUDIOS SOBRE CULTURA Y SOCIEDAD
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Ways of knowing in ethnographic perspective: institutional receivers
Autor/es:
CARRANZA, ISOLDA E.
Lugar:
Budapest
Reunión:
Congreso; 2nd International Conference on Sociolinguistics; 2018
Institución organizadora:
Eötvös Loránd University
Resumen:
This presentation builds on an interest in discursive practices in institutions and the contributions of ethnography to understanding them (Blommaert 2015, Maryns 2013, Jacobs & Slembrouck 2010) with the aim of exploring the problem of veracity, the reception of citizens' claims, and insiders' and outsiders' ways of knowing. A multi-site ethnography in very different judicial settings allows for the observation of two kinds of speech events: interviews of witnesses during the preparatory stage of a trial and interviews of inmates who make special requests regarding the conditions of imprisonment. The institutional addressees? interactional conduct does not give away their evaluation of the extent to which their interlocutors are being truthful. To an observer, claims seem to display verisimilitude and the routine character of the speech events precludes any indications to the contrary. However, in informal conversation with the researcher, two clerks disclose assumptions about the represented reality and their interlocutors' sincerity, therefore, a contrasting picture emerges of the citizens? claim and interests. Suspicion and disbelief are the norm in the clerks' take on part of what they hear. This is in line with their expectations about specific social types and contexts, and constitutes a kind of expert knowledge acquired on the job and as part of institutional culture. The interested nature of any communicative behaviour involving conflict does not suffice to account for the usual perception of the non-institutional participant as untrustworthy. There is a mismatch between the official frame of contact communication and the backstage reception, which is grounded on the expert?s hunches and how typical the recounted events are. It is concluded that such expertise consists in resorting to sources of evidence that override clients? statements, 'professional listening' includes concealing the ongoing evaluation of the interlocutor's credibility, and ethnography has the potential to enhance insights from discourse analysis.