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In:Identity Perspectives from Peripheries
Edited by Yoshiko Matsumoto and Jan-Ola Östman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 352] 2025
► pp. 94–124

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Chapter 5
Knowledge distribution in provenance inquiries

Small talk in Nigerian clinical meetings

 | University of Ibadan
Published online: 13 June 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.352.05ode
Abstract
The chapter addresses how doctors and patients negotiate provenance in small talk initiated by doctors in Southwestern Nigerian clinical meetings. Citing instances of provenance inquiries found in 20 clinical interactions, and adopting a CA-inspired discourse-analytical approach (with aspects of progressivity and Heritage’s epistemic distribution theory combined with small talk theorising and top-down methods), the chapter explores small talk as a peripheral discourse in the Nigerian hospital meetings in relation to the deployment of provenance inquiries in the encounters. It analyses how provenance inquiries are initiated and responded to, the epistemic stances underlying their uses, their interactional consequences and the circumstances under which they develop into fully-fledged provenance inquiry small talk. It argues that the doctor plays an important role in the initiation of provenance inquiry small talk, but that successfully transforming topicalised talk into small talk proffers is licensed by the patient, which foregrounds the strict dependence of provenance inquiry small talk on the neutralisation of the doctor’s clinical power. The study concludes that while provenance inquiry small talk plays a peripheral role in the institutional context of medical encounters, its significance in culturising the meetings and occasionally reducing clinical tension between doctors and patients in the peripherality of Nigerian hospitals is immense.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: A peripheral perspective on peripherality
  • 2.Background and methodology
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Epistemic domains in provenance inquiry small talk
      • 3.1.1Morpho-syntactic features and epistemic territories
        • a.PAT provides requested information/confirms DR’s epistemic assumptions
        • b.PAT refutes DR’s epistemic assumption
    • 3.2Provenance inquiry initiation and topicalisation of ST
      • 3.2.1Provenance inquiries do not get developed into/negotiated as ST proffers
      • 3.2.2Provenance inquiries that get topicalised and turned to ST proffers
        • a.PT is un/willing to provide requested information in out-group/simple in-group interactive contexts
        • b.PT is willing to provide requested information in complex in-group interactive contexts
    • 3.3Turn/Epistemic control, epistemic distribution and implications for clinical talk
  • 4.Conclusions
  • ?ack?
  • Notes
  • Appendix
  • References
References (28)
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