Abstract

This dissertation sketches a theory of expected conversational roles. An expected conversational role is the trajectory you expect a person will take when contributing to a conversation about a certain topic. ECRs are used to explain instances of surprise that arise in response to what people say. I distinguish Content Directed Surprise from Speaker-Oriented Conversational Surprise. We see the latter in, say, a sexist math professor’s surprise that a young woman has given a correct answer. Here the object of his surprise is not her answer, but that she had it. Instances of speaker-oriented conversational surprise occur when an ECR is violated. I draw attention to two familiar ways we form them. ECRs are formed through practicing what we will say to certain people given certain subject matters. ECRs are also passively formed via tacit beliefs we come to have about people based on their social identity. Last, I give an account of the normative profile of instances of speaker-oriented conversational surprise. This account distinguishes the assessment from the phenomenological charge of an instance of speaker-oriented conversational surprise. The assessment reflects how an utterance has violated expectations while the phenomenological charge reflects the personal importance this violation carries for the subject of speaker-oriented conversational surprise.