What is Epistemological Violence in the Empirical Social Sciences?

This article discusses the meaning of epistemological violence in the empirical social sciences. It is argued that the concept is closer to personal than to structural violence in that it has a subject, an object, and an action, even if the violence is indirect and nonphysical: the subject of violence is the researcher, the object is the Other, and the action is the interpretation of data that is presented as knowledge. Using a hypothetical example, the problem of interpretation in empirical research on the Other is discussed. Epistemological violence refers to the interpretation of social-scientific data on the Other and is produced when empirical data are interpreted as showing the inferiority of or problematizes the Other, even when data allow for equally viable alternative interpretations. Interpretations of inferiority or problematizations are understood as actions that have a negative impact on the Other. Because the interpretations of data emerge from an academic context and thus are presented as knowledge, they are defined as epistemologically violent actions. Problems, consequences, and practices surrounding this concept are discussed.     

Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

Linking yesterday and tomorrow: Preschoolers' ability to report temporally displaced events

Various lines of research have recently reported links between the ability to recall past and imagine future episodes. Here I report evidence that such links exist in development. Eighty‐two children were asked to report what they did yesterday and what they are going to do tomorrow. Children who could answer one were also more likely to answer the other question. Furthermore, there was an association between the quantity of responses for past and future questions. This correlation continued to be significant even when controlling for children's capacity to answer similar questions that did not have a temporal, episodic component (e.g., ‘tell me all the things that you can think of that are red’). Together, these results are in line with the growing evidence for fundamental links in the neuro‐cognitive resources involved in thinking about past and future events.