Abstract
Although advice is routinely offered in ordinary conversation, commentators and analysts have treated it as a special or delicate type of action, noticing a number of challenges associated with both providing and receiving it. In this article, I first describe the most basic social-sequential context for giving advice and explicate how the formulations speakers use to offer advice are adapted to the distinct epistemic configurations (and other characteristics) that characterize that context. Drawing on Jefferson and Lee’s (1992) observations regarding ‘troubles tellings’, I argue that speakers typically offer advice when a co-participant reports an insoluble trouble or problem to one who (may or claims to) possess special knowledge about the domain of trouble. I show how this epistemic configuration constitutes a ‘home environment’ for advice-giving (i.e. a place where advice may be relevantly offered) and discuss how speakers vary the design of their advice (e.g. using different grammatical forms) to adapt to the sequential environments that entail different epistemic configurations. Finally, I consider how alternative, contrasting responses to advice manage (e.g. by ratifying or challenging) the epistemic framework set in motion by advice-giving.
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
Introduction
Offering advice is a ubiquitous feature of everyday life. Speakers typically provide advice to recipients who report or (may) encounter some trouble or problem, but the association between advice and troubles can be realized in many and varied ways. Advice can be offered to friends, colleagues, family members, and acquaintances or solicited by them, and it can be the basis for institutional relationships between professionals and lay people regarding troubles that span virtually every domain of life, including health, child rearing, marriage, mental health, employment, career development, and so on. The ubiquity of advice-giving appears to contradict most conventional wisdom about it, however. A brief look at the most well-known idiomatic expressions concerning advice suggests that those offering advice (‘Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it’) and those receiving it (‘I always pass on good advice. It’s the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself’) encounter tensions between overt appreciation of advice and as a form of common-sense or professionally ratified knowledge, and the frequency with which it is nevertheless rejected. What are the sources of these tensions? and how do they help us understand both occasions for giving advice and the methods speakers use to offer and respond to it?
One source of these tensions is suggested by Searle (1969: 67), who observed that advice is a speech act where a speaker ‘tells you what is best for you’. As Heritage and Sefi (1992) explain, advice-giving can be interactionally problematic because offering it positions the recipient as in need of knowledge, or wisdom in ways that may call their competence into question. In this respect, advice-giving is responsive to the presumed knowledge deficits of advice-recipients (Hutchby, 1995; Locher and Hoffman, 2006; Poulios, 2010), which is one form that ‘epistemic asymmetry’ can take (e.g. Ekberg and LeCouteur, 2015). Goldsmith (2004: 78) similarly topicalizes the potential reputational matters at stake in advice-giving sequences, arguing that parties must take into account ‘how the advice makes them look, how it makes the other person look, and what it says about the relationship’ between them.
As we shall see, the very state of affairs that makes it relevant to offer advice also makes it difficult to either accept or reject: In the first place, a person offering advice claims to have information or knowledge that a recipient needs either because s/he has professed or demonstrated that s/he lacks it. Accepting such advice may be sensitive precisely because it effectively ratifies this understanding. And yet, rejecting advice may also be sensitive because, in doing so, the advice-recipient may be understood to negatively evaluate the advice, and thus challenge the advice-giver’s competence or expertise. As researchers have observed, speakers who reject advice typically offer ‘personal’ reasons to account for doing so. For example, MacGeorge et al. (2016) argue that advice-recipients can resist advice by claiming that it conflicts with pre-existing plans. Similarly, Ekberg and LeCouteur (2015) show that clients draw on a range of accounts to resist therapists’ proposals, citing restrictive situational factors, fixed physical states, or claims to have already tried what was being proposed. They conclude that clients justify their rejection of the proposed course of action by asserting their primary epistemic access to their personal experiences (for epistemics, see Heritage, 2012). This paper elaborates on these findings by showing that the organization of advice-giving sequences entails participants’ managing the complex relationship between their relative epistemic access to two distinct domains of knowledge and experience: The advice-giver’s access to (experientially grounded) common-sense or professional knowledge regarding the optimal course of action to address, or provide a solution for, the form of trouble targeted by the advice, and advice-recipients’ primary epistemic access to their own personal circumstances and experiences. As demonstrated below, how advice is requested or occasioned, how it is provided, and what a recipient does next, reflects participants’ effort to manage the complex epistemic frameworks that are invoked across advice-giving sequences.
In the following we use Conversation Analysis (CA) to consider how speakers manage the dilemmas posed by giving and receiving advice, focusing primarily on how speakers rejecting advice nevertheless manage the epistemic configurations that attracted the proffered advice in the first place. We do so by examining how speakers proffering advice compose their actions, the range of methods advice-recipients use in rejecting advice, and the underlying contingencies managed by speakers that account for readily observable patterns in advice-giving sequences across these two sequential positions.
Literature review
Conversation analytic studies of advice-giving
Jefferson and Lee’s (1992) study of advice-giving explicates the potential conflicts posed by two possible ways that recipients can respond to troubles tellings: Recipients can align as a recipient, and therefore continue listening, or they can offer some sort of advice or assistance addressed to the reported trouble. As they observe, even in cases where a next speaker proffers sequentially fitted forms of advice, trouble-tellers may nevertheless dispute or reject that advice because they may be reluctant to transform from speaker to (advice) recipient. Indeed, as they note it is only in the case of ‘service encounters’ that advice may be unproblematically proffered in response to troubles tellings, and thus where that advice may be routinely accepted. As this distinction suggests, advice-giving may be viewed differently and accomplish different actions in mundane and institutional settings.
In some institutional settings, participants may orient to pre-alignment with respect to the roles implicated in advice-giving (advice-giver and advice-seeker/recipient). For example, in encounters between therapists and clients (Ekberg and LeCouteur, 2015), or between students and (peer) tutors (Waring, 2017), participants may be said to be pre-aligned as advice-seeker and advice-giver. Across these settings, participants orient to institutional representatives as having superior epistemic and deontic rights than their lay counterparts (Heritage, 2012; Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2012). These orientations can be appreciated in the ways that lay participants seek advice and the ways that advice-givers design the advice they provide. For example, would-be advice-recipients can establish epistemic asymmetry, as when new mothers explicitly request advice by posing questions or tacitly solicit advice by reporting problems or troubles (Heritage and Sefi, 1992). In response, advice-givers can design their turns to tacitly reference these asymmetries by formulating explicit advice as recommendation, for example, ‘I would recommend. . .’ (Heritage and Sefi, 1992). Advice-givers may also deploy practices, such as interrogatives (Butler et al., 2010) or ‘going general’ (Waring, 2017), to minimize the asymmetry. Thus, even in contexts where participants are pre-aligned as advice-giver and advice-recipient, advice-givers use a wide variety of formats that index or preserve the perceived competence of the recipient.
Responses to advice in institutional settings are designed to address two key dimensions of advice-giving: the acceptability of the advice and the recipient’s displayed commitment to following it. New mothers usually choose to respond with minimal acknowledgements, such as ‘mm’, ‘yeah’, or assertion of knowledge, ‘I know’, probably because they don’t want to be considered incompetent mothers (Heritage and Sefi, 1992). In addition, clients may deploy practices, such as direct reported speech, to account for their ‘inability to comply’ when rejecting the advice proffered by therapists (Ekberg and LeCouteur, 2015). It should be noted that these ways of rejecting or resisting advice typically avoid explicitly challenging the advice itself. In this way, lay participants’ methods for rejecting advice sustain their professional counterparts’ status as an expert as well as the professionally sanctioned body of knowledge from which their advice is drawn.
Moving from studies of institutional settings to advice-giving in informal, everyday interactions, we can note that the picture remains far from complete (see Limberg and Locher, 2012). A range of studies have elaborated on Jefferson and Lee’s (1992) initial observations regarding placement of advice in response to troubles tellings and the ways that trouble-tellers typically resist it. Goldsmith (2004), based on field notes, identifies four sequential contexts in which advice comes to be offered. Advice may be offered in response to explicit solicitations for assistance, an ambiguous in-between state, occasions where it is clearly unsolicited, and following the advice-giver introducing talk about a problem that the advice-recipient ratifies. Similarly, Riccioni et al. (2014) also describe several contexts in which advice may be relevantly offered in everyday peer interactions: A speaker confiding troubles may request or solicit advice, or they may do neither. Although these studies have described some overarching contexts for advice-giving, specifying the underlying epistemic frameworks that are constitutive of them, and the ways in which speakers’ orientations to them may be reflected in the alternative practices they use to offer advice, has remained elusive.
The practices speakers use to offer and respond to advice reflect an orientation to the connection between the assertion of epistemic asymmetries and the potential reputational consequences of ‘needing advice’. For example, Shaw et al. (2015) show that participants may use practices that reduce any claimed knowledge asymmetry between the co-participants (e.g. via the use of interrogatives or assessments) when conveying advice. These actions generally focus on the recipients’ willingness and ability to perform the target action, with the knowledge asymmetry entailed in giving advice either mitigated or emphasized via practices for indexing contingency and entitlement. Riccioni et al. (2014) find a similar pattern in talks about troubles in Italian: Recipients may align with or accept explicitly requested advice, while resisting unsolicited advice by engaging in negotiations about the relative epistemic positions of the participants. Shaw and Hepburn (2013) show that the adult daughter tends to accept the advice that the mother formulates as a ‘reminder’, which casts the daughter as ‘already knowing’, while she resists the advice offered as ‘news’ with explicit claims of prior knowledge (and thus competence) such as ‘I know’ (see Mikesell et al., 2017). As these studies demonstrate, except for those occasions in which recipients specifically request advice, advice-giving may be especially fraught in informal settings precisely because the relevance of giving advice depends on a would-be advice-recipient’s alignment as a recipient of it. In contrast to some institutional settings where one party may be pre-aligned as an advice-recipient, speakers in informal settings may use various practices that diminish the knowledge asymmetry that might otherwise be claimed in offering advice as a method for encouraging responses that align with, rather than resist, the advice.
The advances made by researchers studying advice in institutional settings from various perspectives do not readily extend to patterns for rejecting advice in everyday interactions. In contrast with institutional settings where advice is sought from an expert, everyday peer interactions are characterized by complex and varying bases for epistemic asymmetries. As a consequence, we can expect the problem of advice-giving in ordinary peer interactions to be even more pronounced and the methods for responding to be even more delicate, and thus deserving of attention from researchers.
Data collection and method
The data used in this study are from naturally occurring conversations recorded from 2016 to 2018 in Beijing, China. These conversations occurred and were recorded in unremarkable locations (e.g. cafeterias, restaurants) between interlocutors known to one another (e.g. among friends, neighbors). Around 35 participants, ranging in age from 21 to 60 took part in these conversations. All participants consented to the study and are native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The recordings were transcribed according to the transcription system developed by Jefferson (2004), and translated into English by the author. All the names of people, places, and institutions have been anonymized, and are referred to using capital letters.
The data are analyzed according to the method described in Schegloff (1996; see also Clift and Raymond, 2018), yielding a collection of approximately 300 advice-giving sequences. In the following, I exemplify this approach via analyses linking practices for formulating utterances and the actions these accomplish, demonstrating these connections through ‘compelling exemplifications in displays of data and analysis’, and by ‘testing’ these claims ‘via confrontation of problematic instances and apparent “deviant cases”’ (Schegloff, 1996: 172).
Occasions for advising others and the basic formats used to offer advice
Advice can be offered in various sequential contexts. In the data collected for this study, we propose the ‘home environment’ for giving advice (i.e. the environment where such an action is both fitted to and made relevant by the sequential context, and where it is most commonly produced) is where an advice-recipient claims or is presumed to have some problem or trouble for which they lack a solution, and where the person proffering advice can claim some familiarity with, or expertise regarding, the advice-recipient’s domain of trouble. Advice-givers may nevertheless proffer advice in various contexts. Trouble-tellers may explicitly report a problem or trouble and invite advice by asking for a solution, they may talk about a problem or trouble without soliciting a solution, or an advice-giver may anticipate a trouble and offer advice on how the trouble might be avoided or minimized. These contexts are consistent with those described for English speaking conversations (see Goldsmith, 2004). This study elaborates on these basic observations by describing the underlying forms of social organization that shape these sequential contexts, accounting for the different practices that speakers use to proffer advice fitted to those contexts, and the practices advice-recipients use to accept or reject the advice.
Examination of the available data reveals that advice is commonly provided using a range of forms. These formats vary both in terms of epistemic stance (Heritage, 2012) and deontic stance (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2012). In what follows, I mainly examine how variations in the use of these alternative stances are primarily sensitive to the epistemic status of the participants and the background knowledge they are normatively presumed to share. The Table 1 above summarizes the distribution of these different advice-giving formats.
Distribution of advice-giving formats.
This distribution suggests that imperative and declarative are the common formats of advice-giving, and are therefore candidates as the default forms for advice-giving. We note that the deontic stance of an advice-giving utterance can be conveyed via its grammatical form (as in the case of imperatives) or via the constructions used to compose declaratives, such as Ruguo/yaoshi (If)-conditional, Ni yinggai/dei (You should/have to), and Ni keyi (You could)-proposal, which introduce variations in the deontic stance along a continuum. Across these various forms, speakers proffering advice take a strong position regarding their advice and their recipients’ relative epistemic status (Heritage, 2012; see also Raymond, 2018: 64–67). These forms embody a common intersection of deontic and epistemic stance: They suggest (in various ways) that the future course of action being suggested is a normatively prescribed solution for the recipient’s troubles or a best option for their circumstances, and that the advice-recipient is unaware of this solution. By contrast, the K−stance enacted by the use of an interrogative form anticipates that a recipient may or does know about the proposed solution (i.e. his/her K+ status), and thereby invites an explanation for why the apparently known-in-common advice won’t work, as in Ni Buneng X a?/X buxing a? (Can’t you X?), or why it hasn’t been followed, as in Ni weishenme bu X? (Why don’t you X?). Similarly, the form X ne? (What about X?) proposes a presumed to be known-in-common solution for consideration and invites the advice-recipient to comment on its adequacy or fitness (see Heritage, 2012). As this brief overview anticipates, the forms speakers use to package advice vary in terms of the deontic and epistemic stance they enact regarding the courses of action they recommend. We now turn to consider how the deployment of these forms is sensitive to the relative epistemic status of the participants.
Advice and epistemic frameworks
We begin with a discussion of the imperative form, which is the most common format for offering advice in our data. Speakers most commonly use the imperative form to offer advice in circumstances where a recipient has or may confront a problem that she does not know how to address, as in the following extract. After a new mother Y discloses a concern about her infant (line 1), her neighbor J, a more experienced mother (of a 6-year-old), diagnoses the problem (line 2), and offers advice regarding how the mother can comfort her infant (lines 4–6). In this way, J treats Y’s disclosure of a symptom, and the method she uses to do so, as seeking or inviting advice.
Extract 1 Home visiting 01 Y: Ta duzi zong shi gulu::, gulu:: 3SG belly always be ONOMA ONOMA Her belly is making a sound like gulu::, gulu:: all the time. 02 J: Chang zhangqi. intestine flatulence Baby gas. 03 Y: Na shi zhangqi ba? that be gas PRT That’s gas, isn’t it? 04 J:→ Nage shenme, na ge reshuidai gei ta= that what take CL hot water bag give 3SG= That uh, take a hot water bag to = 05 → = gei ta fu fu give 3SG warm warm = warm her belly. 06 Y: Fu yi fu. warm one warm Warm her belly a little.
In discussing the sounds from her daughter’s belly (line 1), Y’s use of ‘gulu gulu’ conveys a lack of familiarity with the experience (e.g. she does not treat it as a codeable or nameable problem), as a practice for inviting assistance (see Kitzinger and Mandelbaum, 2013). Thus, while Y does not overtly solicit advice from J, she nevertheless communicates her lack of experience with, or uncertainty about, her infant daughter’s circumstances to a more experienced mother, and thereby invites help from her. In response, J initially ratifies this alignment, naming (in line 2) the source of Y’s daughter’s belly sounds as a diagnosable problem (‘baby gas’). In light of Y’s confirming response (line 3) – which defers to J’s expertise while also declining to treat it as news (suggesting that she had at least entertained this possibility) – J offers advice using the imperative ‘take a hot water bag to warm her belly’ (lines 4–5). Over the sequence, J establishes that she recognizes and is familiar with the source of Y’s concern and offers a way to address it that Y accepts (as new). In this way, J offers advice to Y in a form that anticipates the latter’s K−status (relative to J) regarding both the nature of the problem and the potential solutions to it. We can note, then, that in formulating the upshot of J’s advice, Y’s response (line 6) indexes her acceptance of J's advice and thereby ratifies both of these assumptions.
Although advice is typically offered in environments where a recipient has already encountered some trouble or problem (as in Extract 1), advice can also be offered in circumstances where a speaker anticipates that a recipient may need help for a problem they have yet to encounter, etc. The available data set suggests a strong relationship between epistemic status and the methods used for giving advice. The most basic or common context for offering advice can be represented schematically in the following diagram (Diagram 1).
The epistemic framework for advice-giving.
The interdependent elements that together comprise the basic configuration captured in this diagram can, of course, vary. For example, in the first box, speakers can also offer advice regarding problems that they assume or anticipate their recipients have or will encounter. Similarly, while the second box indicates that speakers offering advice anticipate that their recipients are unaware of (K−) the solution being provided, in some cases such speakers may anticipate that recipients may or do know about the advice they provide. Alternatively, advice-givers’ presumptions regarding their own superior knowledge vis-à-vis advice-recipients may be wrong, as in cases where advice-recipients reveal they know more or better with respect to the issue covered by the advice. Lastly, while speakers typically adopt the stance that their advice offers the best (or normatively prescribed) solution to the problem, in some cases persons offering advice design their turns so as to avoid this assertion. In this respect, the elements described in this diagram should be considered axes of variation in practices for advice-giving rather than fixed dimensions of that activity.
In the cases examined below, we explicate how speakers adapt practices for giving advice to variations in the contexts where advice is offered. By attending to these variations, we can begin to appreciate how the alternative formats used to offer advice come to be selected, and how these formats, in turn, shape the sequential relevancies they set in motion. Using the observations I’ve registered in and about Diagram 1, which collectively describe the basic sequential context in which speakers offer advice using the imperative form, we can begin to appreciate how the other forms speakers use are adapted to contexts that vary in systematic ways.
Speakers can use interrogatives to formulate advice fitted to variations in the epistemic framework entailed by advice-giving. In using a wh-interrogative, speakers treat the solution they offer as possibly known to the advice-recipient, and thereby invite them to elaborate the (in)feasibility of the solution, or account for why they have not adopted it. Consider Extract 2, which illustrates these features. C and S, two graduate student colleagues, discuss the challenges S faces as a new mother. After detailing the additional work entailed by her avoidance of spicy food, C uses a so-prefaced interrogative to suggest that S might consider other food options in cafeteria.
Extract 2 Buying food from the cafeteria 01 C: Na ni zhongwu jiu zai zher ziji zuo fan chi? then you midday just DUR here self cook dinner eat So you cook for yourself at midday? 02 S: En, yinwei wo xianzai chi fan bijiao na sha me= mm ’cause I now eat meal comparatively that what PRT Mm, ’cause now I am very picky about food= 03 = Lade shenme de dou bu neng chi. spicy what NOM all NEG able eat =Things like spicy foods are forbidden. 04 C:→ Na canting limian mai ne? then cafeteria inside buy PRT So what about buying food from the cafeteria NE? 05 S: Canting limian hao duo dou shi lade, juedaduoshu dou shi lade, keneng you yi ge qingcai bu shi lade= cafeteria inside good many all be spicy most all be spicy maybe have one CL green vegetable NEG be spicy Many foods in the cafeteria are spicy, most foods are spicy, maybe only one green vegetable is not spicy=
In discussing her life as a new mother, S conveys that she must cook midday because she is ‘picky’ about the foods she eats and she specifically avoids spicy foods (lines 1–3). C addresses this trouble using a so-prefaced interrogative (‘so what about. . .’) that invites S to consider buying food from the cafeteria as an alternative to cooking (line 4). In using ‘X ne?’ (What about X?) format, C simultaneously asserts a possible solution that addresses S’s circumstances while avoiding any possible implication that it may be unfamiliar to her. In suggesting a solution that could or should be known to a recipient, the format also anticipates that the recipient may have already considered and rejected the solution. Thus, in formulating an option that may be known to S, C alters the sequential implications of her suggestion: S can either treat the suggestion as news if she has not considered it or convey why she has already rejected this option if she has. We can note, then, that S’s response details the problems with the food choices offered by cafeteria (line 5), thereby conveying her rejection of the possible suggestion.
In this sequence, C’s use of a query to offer advice adjusts the default epistemic framework for this activity. Rather than claiming to offer a solution that may be unfamiliar to her recipient, C’s use of the ‘X ne?’ (What about X?) format establishes a relatively flat epistemic gradient (cf. Heritage and Raymond, 2012) by proposing a possibly known-in-common solution to S’s troubles. In so doing, the advice-giver anticipates that there may be grounds for rejecting the advice (since they would not have a problem to report if it was effective and they did know about it), and thereby enables a different set of responses. To illustrate how other variations are consequential for the activity of giving advice, we first address how advice-recipients respond to the advice they are given.
Responding to advice (offered via imperatives and declaratives)
As we have noted above, advice is typically offered as a solution to a recipient’s problem or need, whether that need is explicitly or tacitly indicated by the target of the advice or presumed by the advice-giver. In responding to advice, recipients’ next turns can address two matters: Whether the advice provides an adequate solution to the problem, and whether it is applicable to their specific circumstances. Responding speakers draw on these matters in different ways depending on whether they accept or reject the advice, however. Speakers accepting advice positively endorse both the advice and its applicability to their situation. By contrast, speakers rejecting advice typically focus only on its applicability to their current circumstances. In this section, we consider these alternatives and their sequential and other implications.
Accepting advice
In proffering advice, speakers propose an alignment between the advice offered as a solution to a problem or trouble, and the advice-recipient’s specific circumstances. In accepting advice, a speaker can ratify this alignment. For example, in Extract 3, M, the mother of a 5-year-old, and Y, who is currently pregnant, discuss whether Y should ask or allow family members to help her following the birth of her child. Y’s query (line 1) pre-aligns as an advice-recipient and initially prompts M’s elaboration of the reasons she didn’t want or accept help. Following this, M offers Y advice using the Yaoshi. . .jiu (If. . .then) construction (‘If you think your mother is reliable, let her help out. . .’, line 37) and then justifies this suggestion by elaborating its benefits (lines 38–39). Y’s response in line 40 both accepts and endorses the advice.
Extract 3 Postnatal care 01 Y: ↑Ei nahui’er nimen houlai you ren zhaogu ma? PRT that moment you later have person take care PRT ↑Oh did anyone help you out at that moment? 02 M: Meiyou. Not have No. ((34 lines omitted— M discloses her unsuccessful experience of having her mother around but Y reports her good relationship with her mother)) 37 M:→ Suoyi, ni yaoshi juede nima kaopu, jiu rang nima zai zher.= so you if think your mom reliable just let your mum DUR here So, if you think your mother is reliable, just let her help you out. = 38 =Deng chu le man yue, ni ye neng dong le, ni ye neng liuda le= wait out PRV full month you also can move PRV you also can walk PRV = After the postnatal month, you can move and walk yourself = 39 = gen bieren liaotian, you shenme wenti, jiu keyi xiang kai le. with others chat have what problem just can think open PRV = Talk to others, you will talk it through if there’s any problem. 40 Y:→ Dui, shuo de you daoli. right say ASSC1 have reason Right, it makes sense. 41 (3.0) 42 M: Zhiyu dai haizi ne, yinwei haizi xiao about babysit kid PRT because kid small As for babysitting, since the baby is little
The two components of Y’s response highlight the distinct relevancies set in motion by M’s advice: The generic advice that new mothers need help and Y’s specific family circumstance that makes such help possible or palatable. In responding positively to both elements, Y’s response affirms M’s advice and endorses its applicability to her circumstance (line 40). In doing so, Y’s response brings the advice sequence to a point of possible completion (see Schegloff, 2007). We can note, then, that following a 3 seconds’ lapse, M moves on to another subject (line 42). This is a pattern observed across the data collected for this study: Advice-recipients accept advice by affirming the proffered advice and endorsing its applicability to their circumstances.
Rejecting advice, responding to epistemic framework
In rejecting advice, advice-recipients can single out either the advice itself or its applicability to their circumstances as a method for conveying that they won’t be taking the advice. Additionally, insofar as advice tells the recipient what they should do, the deontic nature of this action can also matter for how speakers reject it. For example, speakers rejecting advice may need to account for doing so. In the data collected for this study, advice-recipients reject advice by focusing primarily on the personal circumstance that makes the advice inapposite. This practice has two main consequences. First, speakers can account for rejecting advice by invoking a domain of experience to which they can claim special access. Second, they can reject advice in a way that ratifies the advice-giver’s K+ epistemic status concerning the broader state of affairs to which the advice is directed. In this way, such rejecting responses introduce a distinction between two domains – one pertaining to the advice and the (generic or common) troubles or needs it addresses, and the other pertaining to the recipients’ (distinctive) personal circumstances where the advice might be applied. When a recipient invokes some aspect of their circumstances (i.e. not known to the other party) as grounds for rejecting advice, they can nevertheless ratify the adequacy of the advice as a solution and thus reaffirm the epistemic authority claimed by the advice-giver. Table 2 above shows a rough frequency distribution of different negative responses to the advice given.
Distribution of methods for rejecting advice.
Advice-recipients may reject advice for various reasons, and these reasons have different implications for advice-givers and their advice. The responses in Table 2 are ordered in terms of the strength or scope of the rejection, from the strongest or most comprehensive rejection (A) to the narrowest and weakest (C). It is worth mentioning that (A) implies both (B) and (C): It indicates that the advice won’t be followed and challenges the epistemic primacy of the advice-giver with respect to the state of affairs addressed by the advice. Not surprisingly, this aggravated form of rejection (A) is rarely used. Similarly, response (B) can imply (C): Where speakers reject the adequacy of the advice, they also convey that it does not fit their circumstances. By contrast, response (C) tacitly accepts that advice may be adequate for others, but does not fit their circumstances. Notably, then, option (C), which offers the weakest form of rejection, is also the most common. The distribution of these methods for rejecting advice suggests that even in circumstances when they reject the advice, speakers endeavor to ratify or support the advice-giver’s epistemic authority concerning the state of affairs covered by the advice.
The data for this study suggest that response type (C) can be further divided into forms of rejection claiming that an advice-recipient is either (a) unable to follow the advice, or (b) unwilling to do so. The former, ‘no fault’ form of rejection (Heritage, 1984), specifies circumstances beyond the recipients’ control in declining the advice, and thereby preserves the competence and epistemic status of the advice-giver. The latter portrays the rejection as a reflection of the recipient’s personal preference, and thereby adopts a more challenging posture regarding the advice. Given these differences, we suggest that inability accounts are the basic or default basis for rejecting advice. Two additional forms of evidence support this claim: (1) inability accounts are much more common than the ones focusing on personal preferences; (2) inability accounts are offered as the primary or first option when both forms are present in a response. Table 3 above shows the distribution of the two rejection categories, with inability accounts far more common than accounts focused on personal preferences.
Distribution of accounts for advice rejection.
Extract 4 illustrates how such inability accounts can be used to reject advice. In this stretch of talk, two friends L and X who attend nearby universities, discuss X’s money troubles. After X, who is a relatively new student, mentions her financial problems to L, an experienced PhD student, L probes these matters (lines 1–2) and suggests (line 3) that X apply to work as a teaching assistant (TA). X rejects L’s advice (lines 04, 10), using a claim that she doesn’t have time to take on additional work to convey her rejection.
Extract 4 Applying for a TA job 01 L: Nimen bu shi you buzhu ma? you not be have stipend PRT Don’t you have stipend ? 02 X: Women yi ge yue jiu 1500. we one CL month just 1500 We just have 1500 a month. 03 L:→ Ni keyi shenqing na ge shenme, zhujiao you could apply that CL what TA You could apply for that, a TA job. 04 X:→ Mei shijian, wo juede. no time I think No time for it, I think. ((5 omitted lines, L introduces the income of the TA at her University)) 10 X:→ Hai shi bie gan le, wo juede shiqing tai duo le. still be NEG do CRS I think thing too many CRS I’d better not take it. I think there are too much stuff. 11 L: Qishi youde shiqing duo, youde shiqing shao. actually some things many some things few Actually some have many things to do but some don’t.
After probing X’s financial circumstances (lines 01–02), L suggests that she ‘could apply for a TA job’ (line 03). In using a Ni keyi (you could)-proposal to offer this advice, L adopts a complex position regarding her suggestion. In the first place, her proposal indexes her status as a more experienced, knowledgeable student – a position underscored by her correction of X in line 11, following the latter’s rejection of her advice. Her use of the ‘you could’ format also reflects L’s understanding that this option may not be known to X. The complex epistemic framework reflected in the design of L’s suggestion suggests that she anticipates it may be rejected. We can note, then, that X’s response cites personal circumstances (‘no time for it’) that prevent her from following L’s advice as a method for conveying her rejection of it. In producing such an inability account, X refers to circumstances that she can claim primary access to, while nevertheless preserving L’s status as the more experienced, knowledgeable student (Heritage, 2012). That is, X ratifies the ‘in principle’ adequacy of L’s advice even as she claims that her circumstances prevent her from actually following it.
Inability accounts used to reject advice without questioning and challenging its adequacy can take many forms. For example, speakers can cite obligations that are in conflict with advice. The inability accounts advice-recipients use, by themselves, to reject advice suggest that this is the simplest or most basic method available for doing so. We now turn to occasions where advice-recipients use inability and unwillingness accounts to reject advice, and consider the possible import of these more complex responses. In Extract 5, S and V are colleagues talking about a problem S has encountered: She bought the wrong type of bicycle for her husband (line 1). When V advises S how to address the problem (line 2), we note that S first claims that she can’t follow the advice (line 3) before conveying her unwillingness to do so (line 5).
Extract 5 Riding bikes 01 S: Wo jiu zhe yang xiang, zao zhidao zheyang de qingkuang, wo jiu gei ta mai [ I just this way think early know this way ASSC situation I just give 3SG buy good little NOM PRT I just thought, if I knew it earlier, I’d have bought [him a 02 V:→ [Na gancui zhe ge ni yong, ranhou zai gei ta [mai yi ge. then just this CL you use and then again give 3SG buy one CL [Then you ride this one, and [buy him another one 03 S:→ [Wo bu hui qi I NEG can ride [I can’t ride. 04 V: Ni bu hui qi zixingche a? you NEG can ride bike PRT? You can’t ride a bike A? 05 S:→ Bu shi bu ai qi che. NEG be NEG able ride just be very long NEG ride PRV and plus I also NEG love ride bike Not I 06 (0.5)
In the sequences examined above, an inability account of the sort S provides (that she cannot ride a bike, line 03) to reject V’s advice (line 02) would bring the sequence to a possible conclusion, in part because it concerns a domain of experience to which S can claim primary access. V, however, treats S’s claim as surprising, producing a query that invites S to confirm her claim. In the face of this challenge, S treats her initial claim as having entailed exaggeration (see Drew, 2003), and explains ‘Not I
Across these extracts, recipients rejecting advice distinguish between two components of it: They reject the advice by indicating that they are unable (or unwilling, in Extract 5) to follow it, while nevertheless treating the proffered advice as a viable or adequate solution to the problem it addresses. Indeed, with very few exceptions (which we examine below), advice-recipients invoke its fit with their current, personal circumstances as a basis for rejecting advice, thereby leaving its status as ‘good’ advice intact. In using these methods, they also absolve the advice-giver for having proffered the rejected advice, that is, by invoking grounds for the rejection that the advice-giver could not know, the advice-recipient treats the advice-giver as having taken into account what they are obligated or expected to know (Raymond and Sidnell, 2019). In cases where speakers rejecting advice comment on both its adequacy as a solution and its applicability to their personal circumstances, these rejections may be understood to be especially strong, as in Extract 6. In this extract, Z and C are PhD classmates, talking about the future of other classmates. C’s praise of two especially successful colleagues (lines 1–2) prompts agreement by Z, and her suggestion that C could change course to follow their path (line 5). Z’s suggestion immediately encounters trouble: C’s use of an open class repair initiation (see Drew, 1997) foreshadows her subsequent disaffiliative response (line 10). In rejecting Z’s advice, C not only treats it as ill-fitted to her circumstances, but as wholly inappropriate as a solution to the challenges she faces.
Extract 6 Changing jobs 01 C: Talia shi zui niu de, talia jiu- na yi nian jiu biye talia= they two be the best NOM they two just- that one year just graduate they two They two are the best. They two- that year only they two graduated.= 02 =anshi sinian biye, hai chu qu dai le yi nian, shenme dou mei danwu. on time four years graduate and go out stay PRT one year what all NEG miss = graduated within four years on time including one year abroad. Nothing is missed. 03 Z: Wo juede zhezhong - I think this kind I think people like them- 04 (0.5) 05 Z:→ Ni daoshihou keyi nasha ya! you then can that PRT You could try that then! 06 C: Shenme? what What? 07 Z: Tiao yi xiazi. jump one CL Have a change. 08 C: Tiao shenme? jump what? Change what? 09 Z:→ Tiao jump position PRT Change your 10 C:→ Tiao na’er qu(.) Name da nianji le, ni yiwei(.)= jump where go(.) so big age PRV you think(.) Change to where? My age? What were you thinking of? = 11 → =Renjia nianqing hai neng daochu xuan xuan. people young still can anywhere select select =Young people can make a selection somewhere else. 12 (0.5) 13 Z: Ye bie ba ziji gao de tai lei le ha? also not BA self get CSC too tire CRS huh Don’t make yourself too tired, huh? 14 C: right PRT actually I toward these stuff look CSC really look CSC very light
While it’s possible that Z’s utterance in line 5 (that C do what their colleagues have done) entails a form of praise, C’s uptake treats it as a deeply problematic form of advice. We can note, for example, that C’s uses of multiple open-class forms repairs initiation (in lines 6, ‘Shenme?’ [what?] and 8, ‘Tiao shenme?’ [change what?]) foreshadow her possible disagreement (Drew, 1997). Z, however, not only passes on these opportunities to back down, but her use of the turn final particle ‘A’ (line 9) in response to C’s repair (in line 8) suggests that the latter should already know the answer (Wu, 2004). Having missed this chance to avoid more direct disagreement up to this point, C’s rejection of Z’s advice is especially strong. Rather than simply decline it, C (line 10) poses a series of challenges that single out distinct dimensions of Z’s advice as inappropriate (see Koshik, 2005) before offering a global condemnation of it (‘what were you thinking of?’) that admonishes Z for failing to take into account what she could or should have known (Raymond and Sidnell, 2019). We can note that C’s rejection of Z’s advice is comprehensive insofar as she rejects both the advice as a solution and its applicability to her circumstances when either of these would have sufficed on their own to accomplish rejection. This global or comprehensive rejection of Z’s advice evidently goes beyond simply resolving the advice-giving sequence and challenges the competence Z’s offering of advice claimed in this domain.
Discussion
This article elaborates on some of the problematic features of advice-giving sequences initially identified by Heritage and Sefi (1992): Specifically, we focus on the knowledge asymmetry asserted between advice-giver and advice-recipient in advice-giving sequences. In the first part of the paper, we consider the basic format for giving advice, and examine how other formats used to proffer advice relate to variations in the epistemic framework established in and through the sequence. We argue that imperative and declarative are the default forms for giving advice in everyday interactions. Both formats treat the advice-recipient as K− with respect to the (better/best) solution to their problem. Other forms are used to manage some differences in the circumstances of the advice-giver relative to the advice-recipient. These variations suggest that where persons use the default forms for offering advice, they tacitly index a domain of experience that positions them as an expert in that domain, which is the basis for help they offer their recipient. That is, the use of the imperative and declarative forms for offering advice entails a claim of their epistemic primacy relative to the recipient, and by extension their relative deontic status as well. As a consequence, offering advice makes relevant a response that may also implicate the epistemic framework presumed or asserted by the advice.
In the second part of the paper we discussed the methods recipients use in responding to advice, focusing particularly on the methods that speakers use to reject it. When accepting advice, recipients evidently also accept the epistemic framework established by advice-givers (i.e. advice-giver’s K+ status relative to their advice-recipient). In our data set, however, advice-recipients reject advice more frequently than they accept it, which is consistent with patterns observed in prior studies on everyday advice-giving sequences (e.g. Jefferson and Lee, 1992). This may reflect participants’ management of the ‘distance-involvement’ dilemma in constructing intimate self-other relations: In responding to actions by others, participants face a dilemma between designing actions that may appear to be ‘disengaged from the affairs of other’ versus ones that may be ‘over-involved with them’ (Raymond and Heritage, 2006: 701). In hearing the personal troubles of others, persons offering advice-designed help or addressing those troubles may take up these matters in ways that over-involve them with the co-participants’ life. In reviewing the methods persons use to reject advice, then, we might expect them to be sensitive to this dimension of advice-giving.
The preceding analysis of advice-giving sequences in this study yielded a range of features that are largely consistent with patterns observed by others. For example, recipients rejecting advice tend to focus on the feasibility of the advice given their circumstances rather than the adequacy of advice as a solution to the problem it is designed to address (e.g. as found by Ekberg and LeCouteur, 2015; MacGeorge et al., 2016). In considering this pattern, we argue that the use of such claims as a default method for rejecting advice reflects the participants’ management of the epistemic framework established by the advice-giver. Specifically, in fashioning ‘no fault’ accounts (i.e. which the advice-giver could not have known beforehand) grounded in the advice-recipients’ personal circumstances, the advice-recipient manages to convey that they will not follow the advice even as they ratify its adequacy as a solution to the problem it is designed to address. That is, advice-recipients using ‘no fault’ accounts to reject advice leave intact the K+ epistemic status of advice-giver and positively ratify their advice even as they convey that they will pass on the opportunity to follow it. This rejection trades on what Drew (1992) has argued in his cross-examination research the ‘maximal’ property of the description. In responding to advice, advice-recipients will be understood to have ‘depict[ed] the most’ (Drew, 1992: 496) about their stance toward the advice. Thus, except in those cases where they specifically comment on the problematic character of the advice, they will have tacitly endorsed its adequacy as a (better/best) solution.
The features of the default form for rejecting advice can be highlighted by considering cases in which responding speakers select a different method for conveying this action. For example, in Extract 6 the advice-recipient rejects both the way the proffered advice fits her circumstances and the adequacy of the advice itself, and thus effectively dismisses the advice-giver’s expertise in the domain. This stronger method for rejecting advice has yet to be observed in advice-giving sequences in institutional settings where people seek advice (e.g. Ekberg and LeCouteur, 2015; Heritage and Sefi, 1992), most likely because the epistemic status of the person offering advice is tied to their institutional identity. Even in everyday encounters, however, such responses are rare, with the vast majority of advice-recipients ratifying the epistemic framework established at the outset of the sequence. This suggests a way in which the organization of preference appears to be sensitive to the relative epistemic status the interlocutors orient to and establish at the beginning of the sequence. Even where advice-recipients reject advice, they do so in ways that preserve the basic epistemic framework established in offering advice, and thereby mitigate the broader social and relational consequences that challenging another person’s competence as a social actor might entail.
Conclusion
This article explicates the epistemic dimensions of advice-giving sequences in everyday interactions and illustrates how practices participants use to give and respond to advice are sensitive to the dilemmas and consequences associated with this activity. I began by showing that variations in the design of utterances offering advice reflect speakers’ orientations to the relative epistemic status of their recipients and index the degree to which those speakers can claim special knowledge regarding the other’s current or future circumstances. Conversely, speakers responding to advice draw on practices that differentiate appreciation for the advice from its applicability to their circumstances. As a consequence, even when responding speakers reject advice, they use forms that mitigate the potential consequences this may have for the more enduring epistemic asymmetries that both parties orient to over the course of the sequence. This analysis helps us appreciate the distinct socio-organizational bases for the conventional wisdom expressed in quotations such as ‘Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it’ (Gordon R. Dickson). This and other such expressions emphasize the apparent contradiction entailed in speakers ratifying or appreciating advice and that they then decline to follow. Viewed from a different vantage, however, it seems that speakers offering and responding to advice orient to or differentially use the fact that any occasion ‘can embody both distinctiveness and recurrence’ (Maynard and Clayman, 2018: 134), while they nevertheless collaborate in dissociating the implications of disagreement (or rejection) from the more enduring socio-epistemic relations that occasioned advice in the first place.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank professors Geoffrey Raymond, Sandy Thompson, and Kevin Whitehead, and the fellow PhD students Matt Fritzler, André Buscariolli from UCSB, professors Wenfang Fan and Zongxin Feng from Tsinghua University, for their valuable suggestions and comments on this article in whole or in part. The author alone remains entirely responsible for its contents.
Glossing conventions
3SG third person singular
ASSC associative (de)
BA a pretransitive marker (ba)
CL classifier
CRS currently relevant state (le)
CSC complex stative construction (de)
DUR durative aspect (zhe, zai)
NEG negatives (bu)
ONOMA onomatopoeia
PRT particle
Q question marker (ma)
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.