AbstractPlacement interviews have become an important discourse genre at universities as they decide about access to social, monetary, or cultural resources. Despite their importance, hardly any linguistic studies deal with this particular discourse genre in academic communication. Using a conversation-analytic approach, we analyze a corpus of placement interviews in which representatives of a German university interview Chinese students applying for a study year at the German university. We examine how Chinese applicants present their second-hand knowledge about Germany and German universities in a conversation with university representatives who have first-hand knowledge about these spaces, i. e., we investigate how interviewers and interviewees deal with epistemic asymmetry when they construct and talk about academic spaces in China and Germany. While some aspects of German academia are situated in
