A Form of Wh-Questions Indexing Incongruent Knowledge Claims

In conversation analysis (CA), wh‐questions are treated as invoking a claim that questioners have no knowledge about the information being solicited. This paper examines a particular form of wh‐questions that indexes an epistemic claim incongruent with such a claim of no knowledge. In particular, it examines wh‐questions that are marked with a committal suffix in Korean conversation, in which the committal suffix indicates that the speaker should have the information at hand. Using the method of CA, this paper shows that these wh‐questions indexing incongruent knowledge claims are used in contexts in which questioners know or should know about the information being solicited. First, they are commonly used to seek a particular piece of information questioners already know about, or should already know about, by reference to prior talk or shared knowledge with recipients. Second, wh‐questions marked with committal endings can be used as word searches. In these cases, they do not seek the other partyʹs active participation in finding solutions to the missing word(s) and thus are self‐directed. The analysis will suggest that wh‐questions with committal endings can serve to avoid a potential trouble or accountability in interaction.