ABSTRACT
Conversation analytic research has long addressed disfluency in speech production, recognizing it as a ubiquitous feature of everyday interaction. Disfluency often arises when speakers hesitate while formulating delicate matters, which can lead to collaborative completions by recipients. This chapter documents a distinct type of disfluency, referred to as epistemicity-oriented disfluency. Participants in conversation constantly monitor epistemic status—that is, who knows more and has greater rights to speak on the given topic. Disfluency may emerge from speaker’s (often unconscious) considerations such as (i) a low degree of commitment (i.e., lack of confidence in the truth value of their utterance) and (ii) a relatively lower epistemic status (i.e., the recipient is more knowledgeable about the topic than the speaker). This chapter demonstrates that, beyond grammatical resources such as sentence-final particles or referential choices, disfluent speech can also function as a vehicle for expressing epistemic stance.
