Resisting an action in conversation by pointing out epistemic incongruence: Mä tiedän ‘I know’ responses in Finnish

Abstract

This paper investigates the Finnish mä tiedän, ‘I know’ utterance in responsive position. The data, gathered from naturally occurring interactions, indicate that these responses occur in sequences with epistemic incongruence: the first pair part is an informing type turn, which presupposes an unknowing (or a less knowing) recipient. With the mä tiedän response, the response-speaker resists this implication and points out the epistemic incongruence there is at that moment. The mä tiedän speaker thus resists the unknowing status attributed to her/him and claims to be knowledgeable, and at the same time resists the social action being accomplished in the informing turn. The uniformity of the expression, its sequential context and interactional function suggest that this expression is rather formulaic. The verb tietää, ‘to know’ is typically described as a complement taking predicate, but the mä tiedän responses include no object argument whatsoever; the object of knowing is to be inferred from the previous turn. The form of the expression is fitted to its sequential position. The turn may also contain response particles (e.g., nii or joo) which specify its contextual interpretation. The data suggest that the use of these Finnish utterances is different from how I know responses are used in English conversations, where the responses may signal not only knowledge but also affiliation.