Narratives about epistemic trespassing

Abstract This paper identifies a previously undescribed genre of narrative about instances where an absent third party trespasses into the epistemic territory of the speaker by disregarding the speaker’s expertise in a knowledge domain tied to the speaker’s identity. These narratives occurred in unstructured interaction between close friends. We extracted a collection of exchanges from a corpus of sixty audio/video recording of conversations elicited in a university setting and analyzed them using methods from Conversation Analysis. In such narratives, speakers vilify the absent third party, make extensive use of direct reported speech, and explain why they are the true authority on the subject in question. They often speak directly to the absent party, sanctioning their behavior. Listeners respond to these narratives by displaying shock at reports of the third party’s statements and amusement at re-enactments of the speaker’s retorts. Listeners also assist in the narratives, often participating in scolding and denigrating the trespasser. We argue that these narratives act to recruit listener assistance in an after-the-fact sanctioning of the trespassing third party and validation of the speaker’s knowledge and related identity.