Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T21:32:41.642Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Describing trouble: Practical epistemology in citizen calls to the police1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Marilyn R. Whalen  and
Don H. Zimmerman
Marilyn R. Whalen
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Don H. Zimmerman
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we examine the way citizens' descriptions of troublesome occurrences in reports to emergency dispatch personnel are vulnerable to suspicion and doubt. The vulnerability of description in these cases involves callers' categorization of, visual or aural access to, and involvement in the reported “trouble.” It is through displays of what we term practical epistemology – displays of how one has come to know about a particular event – that these vulnerabilites emerge and are tested and negotiated in the request for and dispatch of emergency assistance. (Conversation analysis, language in institutional settings, pragmatics)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 465 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. M. (1982). Understanding formality: Notes on the categorization and production of “formal” interaction. British Journal of Sociology 33:86–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, J. M., & Drew, P. (1979). Order in court: The organization of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boden, D., & Zimmerman, D. H. (eds.) (in press). Talk and social structure. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Button, G., & Lee, J. (eds.) (1987). Talk and social organization. Avon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicourel, A. V. (1987). The interpenetration of communicative contexts: Examples from medical encounters. Social Psychology Quarterly 50:217–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clayman, S. (1987). Generating news: The interactional organization of news interviews. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (eds.) (in press). Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frankel, R. M. (1989). “I wuz wondering - uhm, could Raid effect the brain permanently d'y'know?”: Some observations on the interaction of speaking and writing in calls to a poison control center. Western Journal of Speech Communication 53:195–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greatbatch, D. (1988). A turn taking System for British new interviews. Language in Society 17:401–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1985a). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In Van Dijk, T. A. (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis. New York: Academic. 95–117.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1985b). Recent developments in conversation analysis. Sociolinguistics Newsletter 15:1–18.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1988). Current developments in conversation analysis. In D. Roger & P. Bull (eds.), Conversation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 21–47.Google Scholar
Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (in press). On the institutional character of institutional talk. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (eds.).Google Scholar
Le Carré, J. ([1962] 1979). Call for the dead. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1984). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard, D. W., & Wilson, T. P. (1980). On the reification of social structure. In McNall, S. G. (ed.), Current perspectives in social theory (Vol. 1.) New York: JAI. 287–22.Google Scholar
Meehan, A. J. (1983). For the record: Organizational and interactional practices for producing police records on juveniles. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
Meehan, A. J. (1984). Assessing the police-worthiness of citizens' complaints to the police: Accountability and the negotiation of “facts.” In Helm, D., Anderson, W. T., & Rawls, A. W. (eds.), The interaction order: New directions in the study of social order. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Mellinger, W. M. (1989). The production of Organizational records: The complaint-taker's construction of the “dispatch package.” Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1983). Giving a source or basis: The practice in conversation of telling “how I know.” Unpublished paper, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford, England.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1971). Unpublished lectures. University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1972a). On the analyzability of stories by children. In Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D. (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 325–45.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1972b). An initial investigation into the usability of conversational data for doing sociology. In Sudnow, D. (ed.), Studies in social interaction, New York: Free Press. 31–74.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1972c). Notes on police assessment of moral character. In Sudnow, D. (ed.), Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press. 280–93.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organizations of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50:696–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Notes on conversational practice: Formulating place. In Sudnow, D. (ed.), Studies in social interaction. New York: Free Press. 75–102.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. Boston: Irvington. 23–78.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1981). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of “uh huh” and other things that come between sentences. In Tannen, D. (ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and talk. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 71–93.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routine as an achievement. Human Studies 9:111–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1987a). Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In Alexander, J. C., Giesen, B., Muench, R., & Smelser, N. J. (eds.), The micro-macro link. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1987b). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly 50:101–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (in press). Reflections on talk and social structure. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (eds.).Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 7:289–327.Google Scholar
Sharrock, W. W., & Turner, R. (1978). On a conversational environment for equivocality. In Schenkein, J. (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic. 173–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1982). Conversation analysis. In Scherer, K. R. & Ekman, P. (eds.), Handbook of methods in nonverbal behavior research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 506–41.Google Scholar
Whalen, J., Zimmerman, D. H., & Whalen, M. R. (1988). When words fail: A single case analysis. Social Problems 35:335–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, M. R., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Sequential and institutional contexts in calls for help. Social Psychology Quarterly 50:172–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, T. P. (in press). Social structure and social interaction. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (eds.).Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1969a). Tasks and troubles: The practical bases of work activities in a public assistance organization. In Hansen, D. A. (ed.), Explorations in sociology and counseling. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. 237–66.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1969b). Record-keeping and the intake process in a public welfare agency. In Wheeler, S. (ed.), On record: File and dossiers in American life. New York: Russel Sage Foundation. 319–54.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1978). Norms in everyday life. Kolner Zeitschrift Fur Sociologie und Socialpsychologie 30:86–99.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1984). Talk and ils occasion: The case of calling the police. In Schiffrin, D. (ed.), Meaning, form, and use in context: Linguistic applications. (Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics 1984.) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 201–08.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1988). On conversation: The conversation analytic perspective. Communication Yearbook 11:406–32.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (in press). The interactional organization of calls for emergency assistance. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H., & Boden, D. (in press). Structure in action. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (eds.).Google Scholar