Robin Wooffitt
Department of Sociology
University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
This paper presents some findings from a conversation analytic study of interaction between psychic practitioners and their clients, or sitters. As its point of departure, it acknowledges Morris' (2005) argument that it is important to examine the social context of claims to parapsychological cognition. In this, it offers a contribution to our understanding of the ways in which participants in psychic-sitter interaction can establish and sustain the sense that genuine parapsychological ablities are being demonstrated. This is not, however, an exercise in cold reading. However much sceptics (or indeed, psychcis) may wish to appropriate the results of convesation analytic reseach on psychic-sitter interaction to support their position, the analyses themselves are ultimately agnostic as to the truth status of the claims of psyhic practitioners. That is, instead of trying to identify a set of objective criteria by which scientists or academic researchers can arbitrate on the validity of claims of paranormal powers, or the objective existence of the spirits, conversation analytic techniques allow us to investigate the sense-making practices through which psychic practitioners and their clients themselves negotiate, ratify, clarify, question or reject the status of paranormal knowledge claims as they manage the routine discursive activities of the consultation or demonstration. The empirical sections of the paper examine three kinds of remedial or repair strategies by which psychic practitioners and their sitters work to sustain the authority or authenticity of the practitioners in situations where their genuiness may be questioned or their claimed parapsychological abilities disconfirmed. The first is available to psychics. If a claim or prediction about the sitter is not accepted or confirmed, a psychic may simply abandon that topic, and then move on to another topic. But this can be an inferentially risky strategy, in that a swift progression on to another topic or claim about the sitter might be the basis upon which a sitter infers that the psychic is merely engaged in guessing, rather than using some form of parapsychological cognition. However, there is a strategy by which psychics can introduce a new topic - known as "and prefacing" - which minimises the likelihood of a sceptical interpretation by the sitter. The second and third strategies are available to sitters. They can either modulate or "soften" their negative or disconfirmatory responses to the psychic's prior prediction or claim. Alternatively, they can engage in a form of embedded or unmarked correction in which the activity of correcting does not become an explicit focus of the exchange. The paper concludes with some critical refections on the relatively unsophisticated account of psychic practitioner- sitter communication advanced in the cold reading literature.