Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis of Evidentiality in PHD Dissertations

Abstract

The present study investigates evidentiality in its broadest sense (Chafe 1986) in PhD dissertations as a genre of academic writing. For this purpose, Chafe’s taxonomy (1986), revised by Ifantidou (2001), has been used as a framework in order to analyze three different groups of datasets, including one group of native speakers of English and two groups of non-native speakers: a group of Turkish speakers of English and the other non-native speakers with diff erent L1 backgrounds. The texts of these three groups are examined in order to fi nd out whether the native language of the participants is a factor in the choice of evidential markers. The results show that the native speakers of English use evidential markers more frequently compared to the non-native authors. In terms of the Native Language/Interlanguage comparison in Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger 1996, 1998), the overall use of evidentiality reveals that non-native authors do not show native-like features in the use of evidentiality. In terms of the Interlanguage/Interlanguage comparison, Turkish authors of academic texts diff er from the authors with various native language backgrounds in terms of the use of evidentiality.

Evidentiality through reported speech: Pragma-linguistic factors affecting its reliability

“…In many cases, epistemic stance depended on the quality of evidence that was assumed according to author's claim. Their relationship has turned out to be an important and very discussed issue (Yildiz 2021, González et al 2017). Our conversations showed that hearers were principally focused to uncover the access or contact the original author had and then to commentate whether it was employed sincerely or not.…”

“…The source where information is based may be transmitted either directly: by speaker's firsthand knowledge: perceptualized through vision, audio (when speaker himself heard original information) or indirectly: through reports/hearsays (quotative or paraphrase), inference by reasoning events, facts etc. (Aikhenvald 2018, Mushin 2001a, 2001b, Yildiz 2021, Fitneva 2001, Willett 1988). Though the reportative evidential is categorized generally in the "indirect" and "non-eyewitness" class, which implies that "the speaker heard about the action from some secondary source" (Aikhenvald 2003:3), it can be either distorted, misinterpreted or recontextualized (Tannen 2007, Mañoso-Pacheco 2019, Holt 1996, McGlone & Baryshevtsev 2018, Sternberg 1982, Buttny 1997), or might be highly reliable if was uttered by a trustworthy or competent person (Mushin 2001a, Fitneva 2001, DeBois 1986, Ishida 2006, Kamio 1994).…”