Epistemic authority in employment interviews: Glancing, pointing, touching

Abstract

Interviewers routinely orient to applicant files as they produce first pair parts (e.g. questions) that forward the business of the interview. As they do so, they make clear what they know, whether they already know it or are discovering it in the moment, whether it comes from the file in hand, and whether the applicant holds primary rights to confirm or amend that information. In these moments, participants work out issues of epistemic authority through an orchestration of multimodal behaviors, including talk, gesture, gaze, and touch. Our analysis focuses specifically on two discourse slots: when interviewers confirm specific information in side sequences; and when they gloss and assess general information while calling for an account. In the former, interviewers display minimal knowledge and secondary (deferred) epistemic authority; in the latter, they show strong knowledge and assert primary epistemic authority. This article demonstrates how epistemic authority, negotiated through embodied talk-in-interaction, contributes to how interviews unfold.