Taking an Agnostic Stance: The Use of “I Don't Know”-Questions in Dutch Home Visits about Child Vaccination

In healthcare encounters, questions play a fundamental role. Through their design, questions impose constraints on answers and convey how strictly these constraints should be adhered to. Using Conversation Analysis, we investigate one mechanism through which such constraints are regulated in question-answer sequences in Dutch home visits: “ I don't know ”-questions (IDK-questions). We demonstrate that, in using this format, speakers adopt an agnostic stance towards what follows in their questions, thus lowering the constraints imposed on recipients' answers. This allows for responses that could otherwise be construed as misaligned, dispreferred, or identity-threatening. Thus, IDK-questions constitute a useful practice for forestalling interactional tension, for promoting progressivity, and for preserving social solidarity, especially in environments where the delicate matter of child vaccination is discussed.