“Watching for witness”: Evidential strategies and epistemic authority in Garrwa conversation

Mushin, Ilana

doi:10.1075/ps.3.2.07mus

Article published In: Evidentiality in Interaction
Edited by Janis B. Nuckolls and Lev Michael
[Pragmatics and Society 3:2] 2012
► pp. 270–293

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“Watching for witness”

Evidential strategies and epistemic authority in Garrwa conversation

Ilana Mushin | University of Queensland

Published online: 12 October 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.3.2.07mus

Linguistic forms with dedicated evidential meanings have been described for a number of Australian languages (eg. Donaldson 1980, Laughren 1982, Wilkins 1989) but there has been little written on how these are used in social interaction. This paper examines evidential strategies in ordinary Garrwa conversations, by taking into account what we know more generally about the status of knowledge and epistemic authority in Aboriginal societies, and applying this understanding to account for the ways knowledge is managed in ‘ordinary’ interactions.

Keywords: evidentiality, Australian Aboriginal languages, epistemic authority, conversation, Garrwa

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