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In:Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts
Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
[Dialogue Studies 25] 2014
► pp. 139–156

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Requesting help with null or limited knowledge

Entitlements and responsibility in emergency calls

 | University of Trento, Italy
Published online: 26 November 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.25.07fel
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.
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