The disputed territories of information: The case of alleged war crimes during the Kosovo War

Abstract

This article analyses participants’ sense-making and demonstrates procedural consequentially and relevance, and makes the data on which observations are based available to readers. By looking at a TV interview, in Albanian, of Hashim Thaçi, the former PM of Kosovo, given to respond to allegations against him regarding involvement in war crimes, the focus will be not only on what it is said but also on the epistemic positions occupied by the participants, with a particular interest in knowledge as a norm-governed domain and in the practices of language usage. We will highlight strategies like repetition, repair, code selection and code switching that are used by participants as a means to claim and govern knowledge. Such knowledge can become the basis of contestation and one speaker may seek to impose their knowledge of some facts or events over another’s and thereby establish a territory of knowledge in a series of moves, not entirely unlike the way that physical territory may be defended or attacked; held or occupied.