The epistemic grounds of face in institutional argumentative talk-in-interaction

This article brings together the two notions of epistemics and face, understood as relational connection and separation (Arundale, 2010). It aims to demonstrate how participants interactionally achieve relational connection and separation through displaying, contesting and negotiating claims to knowledge along with the interactional achievement of pragmatic meanings and social actions in an institutional argumentative talk-in-interaction. The analyses, informed by Conversation Analysis and Face Constituting Theory (Arundale, 2010) reveal how participants orient to slight connection but extreme separation through orientations to epistemic differentiation created in differences in epistemic access and claims to epistemic primacy.