Cover not available

Article published In: Language and Dialogue
Vol. 10:2 (2020) ► pp.215–240

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Demonstrative questions and epistemic authority management in medium-sitter interactions

Some examples from an Italian “public mediumship demonstration”

 | University of Macerata, Italy
 | University of Macerata, Italy
 | University of Macerata, Italy
Published online: 4 September 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00067.bon
Abstract
Although paranormal experiences have been broadly investigated, medium-sitter interactions have been studied much less. In this article, five excerpts from an Italian “public mediumship demonstration” are presented with the main aim to answer the following research questions: (1) what are the linguistic strategies used by the medium to manage her epistemic authority and by the sitters to acknowledge, strengthen, resist or contest it? (2) how do these strategies affect the sequential structure of interaction? The analyses reveal that: the medium mainly uses demonstrative questions; sitters generally confirm what the medium discloses, acknowledging her epistemic authority; when sitters do not confirm, the medium resorts to three main linguistic strategies attempting to (re)establish her authority; when the medium has to manage confirmation failures, the sequential structure becomes more complex.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corpus, aims, methods
    • 2.1Corpus
    • 2.2Aims
    • 2.3Method
      • KUB Model
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Some quantitative data
    • 3.2The qualitative analysis
      • 3.2.1Confirmative answers
        • The acknowledgment of M’s epistemic authority
        • The strengthening of M’s epistemic authority
      • 3.2.2Confirmative failures
        • Reworking questions on the basis of what S has previously said to reduce the likelihood of obtaining another disconfirming answer
        • Overlapping and quickly shifting to a related topic to limit the damage
        • Self-repair expressions (I explained myself poorly) to ascribe S’s disconfirmation to a linguistic misunderstanding, and adding new questions
  • 4.Conclusion and discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (54)
References
Aphek, Edna and Yishai Tobin. 1990. The Semiotics of Fortune-Telling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Avtgis, Theodore. 1998. “Locus of control and persuasion, social influence, and conformity: A meta-analytic review.” Psychological Reports 83 (3): 899–903. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beach, Wayne A. 1993. “Transitional regularities for ‘casual’ “Okay” usages.” Journal of Pragmatics 191: 325–352. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, and Andrzej Zuczkowski. 2018a. “Epistemic stance negotiation: Some examples from Italian conversations.” Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 1351: 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018b. “Questions and epistemic stance in Italian conversations.” Ampersand 51: 29–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chauvin, Bruno and Etienne Mullet. 2018. “Individual differences in paranormal beliefs: The differential role of personality aspetcs.” Current psychology: 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cialdini, Robert B. 1983. Influence. The Psychology of persuasion. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2004. “The science of persuasion.” Scientific American Mind 14 (1): 70–77.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delorme, Arnaud, Julie Beishel, Leena Michel, Mark Boccuzzi, Dean Radin and Paul J. Mills. 2013. “Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with deceased.” Frontiers in Psychology 41: 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drinkwater, Kenneth, Andrew Denovan, Neil Dagnall and Andrew Parker. 2018. “The Australian Sheep-Goat Scale: An Evaluation of Factor Structure and Convergent Validity.” Frontiers in Psychology 91: 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enoksen, Anette Einan and Paul Dickerson. 2018. “That proves my point: How mediums reconstrue disconfirmation in medium-sitter interactions.” British Journal of Social Psychology 571: 386–403. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayano, Kaoru. 2011. “Claiming epistemic primacy: Yo-marked assessments in Japanese.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada and Jakob Steensig, 58–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Question design in conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, eds. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 395–414. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wyley Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 2012a. “Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1): 1–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012b. “The epistemic engine: Sequence organization and territories of knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1): 30–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John and Geoffrey, Raymond G. 2005. “The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (1): 15–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 2010. “Questioning in medicine”. In “Why Do You Ask?”: the Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John and Geoffrey Raymond. 2012. “Navigating epistemic landscapes: Acquiescence, agency and resistance in responses to polar questions.” In Questions: Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives, ed. by Jan P. de Ruiter, 179–192. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Danny L. 1984. “Divinatory Discourse.” Symbolic Interaction 7 (2): 135–153. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamio, Akio. 1997. Territory of Information. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William and David Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse, Psychoterapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lamont, Peter, Claudia Coelho and Andrew Mckinlay. 2009. “Explaining the unexplained: Warranting disbelief in the paranormal.” Discourse Studies 11 (5): 543–559. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Seung-Hee. 2014. “Response design in conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by John Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 415–432. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2014. “Action formation and ascription.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by John Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 103–130. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per and Thomas Luckman. 1991. “Asymmetries in dialogue: some conceptual preliminaries”. In Asymmetries in Dialogue, ed. by Ivana Marková and Klaus Foppa, 1–20. Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Locke, Terry. 2004. Critical Discourse Analysis. New York/London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milgram, Stanley. 1963. “Behavioural study of obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 671: 371–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza. 2013. “Displaying, contesting and negotiating epistemic authority in social interaction: Descriptions and questions in guided visits.” Discourse Studies 15 (5): 597–626. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ohashi, Yasushi, Robin Wooffitt, Clare Jackson and Yumi Nixon. 2013. “Discourse, culture, and extraordinary experiences: Observations from a comparative, qualitative analysis of Japanese and UK English accounts of paranormal phenomena.” Western Journal of Communication 77(4): 466–488. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petty, Richard E. and John T. Cacioppo. 1984. “The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(1): 69–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1986. Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. New York: Springer-Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2003. “Grammar and social organization: Yes/No interrogatives and the structure of responding.” American Sociological Review 68 (6): 939–967. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riccioni, Ilaria, Ramona Bongelli, Gill Philip and Andrzej Zuczkowski. 2018. “Dubitative questions and epistemic stance.” Lingua, 2071: 71–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1980. “Preliminaries to preliminaries: “Can I ask you a question?”.” Sociological Inquiry 501: 104–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction. London: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simmonds-Moore, Christine A. 2016. “An interpretative phenomenological analysis exploring synesthesia as an exceptional experience: Insights for consciousness and cognition.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 13(4): 303–327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2005. “Modified repeats: One method for asserting primary rights from second position.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(2): 131–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Sequence organization.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by John Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 191–209. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig. 2011. The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stone, Anna. 2016. “Rational Thinkink and Belief in Psychic Abilities: It Depends on Level of Involvement.” Psychological Reports 118 (1): 74–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Storm, Lance, Ken Drinkwater and Anthony L. Jinks. 2017. “A Question on Belief: An Analysis of Item Content in Paranormal Belief Questionnnaires.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 31 (2): 187–230.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szczyrbak, Magdalena. 2018. “Knowing, Unknowing or Believing? Epistemic Stance in Donald Tusk’s Testimony in the Trial on the Polish Air Force Tu-154 Air Crash.” Studies in Polish Linguistics 13 (34): 209–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. 2004. “Critical Discourse Analysis”. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heide Hamilton, 352–371. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wales, Katie. 2009. “Unnatural conversation in unnatural conversations: speech reporting in the discourse of spiritual mediumship.” Language and Literature 18 (4): 347–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wood, Wendy. 2000. “Attitude change. Persuasion and social influence.” Annual Review of Psychology 511: 539–570. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wooffitt, Robin. 2000. “Some properties of interactional organisation of displays of paranormal cognition in psychic-sitter interaction.” Sociology 34 (3): 457–479.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001a. “Researching psychic practioners: Conversation analysis.” In Discourse as Data. A Guide for Analysis, ed. by Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon J. Yates, 49–92. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001b. “A socially organized basis for displays of cognition: Procedural orientation to evidential turns in psychic-sitter interaction.” British Journal of Social Psychology 401: 545–563. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. The language of mediums and psychics. Burlington, USA: Ashgate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Epistemic authority and neutrality in the discourse of psychic practitioners: Toward a naturalistic parapsychology.” Journal of Parapsychology 71 (1/2): 69–104.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wooffitt, Robin, Nicola Holt and Simone Allistone. 2010. “Introspection as institutional practice: Reflections on the attempt to capture conscious experience in a parapsychology experiment.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 7(1): 5–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wooffitt, Robin, Clare Jackson, Darren Reed, Yasushi Ohashi and Isaac Hughes. 2013. “Self-identity, authenticity and the other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship.” Language and Communication 331: 93–105. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zuczkowski, Andrzej, Ramona Bongelli, and Ilaria Riccioni. 2017. Epistemic Stance in Dialogue. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Bongelli, Ramona, Alessia Bertolazzi, Marina Paolanti & Ilaria Riccioni
2025. Exploring online patient-doctor interactions. An epistemic and pragmatic analysis of Q&A patterns in an Italian “Ask to the doctor” medical forum. Patient Education and Counseling 134 ► pp. 108662 ff. DOI logo
Bertolazzi, Alessia, Ramona Bongelli & Ilaria Riccioni
2024. Health Risk Communication During COVID-19 Emergency in Italy: The Impact of Medical Experts’ Debate on Twitter. Health Communication 39:8 ► pp. 1616 ff. DOI logo
Bongelli, Ramona, Andrzej Zuczkowski & Ilaria Riccioni
2023. The Italian Epistemic Disclaimer Non so [I Don’t Know] in a Corpus of Gynaecological Interactions. Languages 8:4 ► pp. 226 ff. DOI logo
Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, Alessandra Fermani & Gill Philip
2020. Hypothetical questions in everyday Italian conversations.. Lingua 246 ► pp. 102951 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue