Seeking advice: Epistemic asymmetry and learner autonomy in writing conferences

Abstract

Advice delivery generally assumes the epistemic asymmetry between the advice giver and the advisee as its central feature (Hutchby, 1995); however, the principle of learner autonomy in educational interaction complicates the management of such an asymmetry between teachers and students. This paper analyzes how the seemingly conflicting aspects of advice delivery manifest within the context of writing conferences. The data consists of approximately 10h of conference sessions held by three instructors and 30 students as part of a writing requirement at a major research university in USA. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, I investigate ways in which students use epistemic downgrades, in particular, ‘I don’t know+if/wh complement,’ to seek advice in two sequentially different environments: (1) as a response to the teacher's elicitation and (2) as an independent advice-seeking initiation. The analysis highlights the following functions of epistemic downgrades: (1) they confirm the participants’ epistemic asymmetry as a normative concern in their interaction; (2) they convey the participants’ orientation to learner autonomy; (3) they suggest the varying degrees of students’ knowledge and commitment to a particular line of action. The findings broaden the scope of conversation analytic research on turn design and action formation and have implications for our understanding of questioning and advice delivery within the field of pragmatics.