“Do I know what I don’t know?” The Communication of Non-Knowledge and Uncertain Knowledge in Science

Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies

“…He concludes that, alongside some highly variable syntactic phenomena, it is patterns of word formation that are also responsible for marking uncertainty and fuzziness. Erben's findings are supported and considerably extended by the studies done by Janich et al (2010), Janich and Simmerling (2013) and Simmerling and Janich (2016/forthcoming). According to these studies, the following elements are at least relevant with regard to speaking/writing about ignorance:…”

“…Although linguistics scholars in many sub-disciplines have indeed dealt with various aspects of communicating knowledge and thus necessarily with asymmetries of knowledge, 2 there are still only few truly relevant studies in this discipline that directly address the way ignorance is rendered in language and communication. The articles by Janich et al (2010) and Simmerling et al (2013) discuss this gap in the research along with potential linguistic approaches to eliminating it by specifically looking at ignorance in science and popular science media. Prior to this, German studies scholar Erben (1994) had looked at the linguistic "Problem of markers of uncertainty and fuzziness" (Problem der Unsicherheits-und Unschärfemarkierung), examining relevant linguistic markers in Theodor Fontane's theatre reviews.…”

Unsicherheit als Herausforderung für die Wissenschaft

“…Die wenigen bisher vorgelegten Arbeiten beziehen sich auf schriftliche wissenschaftliche und populärwissenschaftliche Texte (z. B Janich et al 2010;Simmerling et al 2013;. oder dienen einer Skizzierung eines linguistischen Forschungsprogramms (vgl.…”

“…Bei drei Antwortoptionen besteht das Problem, dass sich teilweise informierte oder unsichere Personen auf Antwortoptionen aufteilen(vgl. Johann 2008; Sturgis et al 2008), obwohl keine Option für sie richtig treffend ist Janich et al 2010…”