Managers see, analysts hear. Epistemic divide in financial dialogues

Abstract

This study investigates the epistemic asymmetry between managers and analysts in earnings conference calls (ECCs) through the lens of evidentiality and epistemicity. ECCs are dialogical exchanges where corporate managers present financial results and analysts pose questions on behalf of investors. These interactions highlight a significant epistemic divide: managers are insiders with direct access to proprietary knowledge, while analysts depend on the managers’ disclosures to inform investment decisions. This work explores how this asymmetry is reflected in the use of evidentials – linguistic markers that indicate the source of knowledge – and examines the strategic use of these markers in displaying and managing knowledge during ECCs.

Our primary hypothesis is that managers, leveraging their privileged access to information, will predominantly use direct evidentials, whereas analysts, positioned as outsiders, will favor hearsay evidentials to attribute knowledge to others. By analyzing a corpus of ECCs, we observe the distribution and function of evidentials to capture the participants' strategic behavior and the influence of institutional roles on knowledge negotiation.

This paper also contributes methodologically by demonstrating how evidential analysis can illuminate role dynamics in institutionalized activity types and highlighting the broader applicability of this approach to other dialogical contexts. After presenting our framework and taxonomy for evidentiality, we offer a quantitative and qualitative analysis of evidential markers to verify our hypothesis, shedding light on how participants’ roles and goals shape their linguistic strategies in managing epistemic asymmetry.