Evidential participles and epistemic vigilance

Abstract

For communicated contents to be accepted by the audience, they have to pass the filters of epistemic vigilance mechanisms, which check the credibility and reliability of communicators and the information provided.Communicators may lack adequate evidence about the information they dispense. One of the ways to indicate to the audience that they are uncertain about some information (rather than to put their reputation as reliable speakers at risk) is to use participial adjectives, such as 'alleged' or 'suspected'. The chapter discusses the features of such adjectives and argues that they specialise for marking the speaker's epistemic stance towards the information communicated -a function they share with other evidentials.Unlike many other expressions denoting epistemic stance, however, they appear to be confined in their scope to the noun phrase in which they occur.(5) a. Do you think you could take this parcel to the post-office and send it for me? b. I was wondering whether the post-office might still be open.Likewise, if a straightforward congratulation on an unequalled essay (2) was perceived as detached, the speaker could elaborate on the reasons why she praises it as a way of empathising with the hearer and making it clear that she intends to praise his work (Norrick, 1980;Marandin, 1987):(6) Excellent essay! It addresses most of the current challenges in relevance-theoretic pragmatics.Not knowing another person well may render complimenting risky, as the complimentee may think that the complimenter simply seeks to comply with rules of etiquette, is flattering or even making fun of him (Wolfson, 1983;Holmes & Brown, 1987). That riskiness is avoided by means of a more indirect formulation which evidences that the complimenter has noticed a change in the complimentee but does not unveil her real opinion about it: (7) It seems that you've been to the hairdresser's.If a recurrent formula to apologise (4) is thought to sound insincere, the speaker may want to show true regret by adding the reasons for the apology: (8) There was a huge traffic jam and I could not make it on time for class.Dispensing information other people might need or have an interest in impacts their set of beliefs. These may be altered by adducing evidence that certain facts or states of affairs hold or that some of them should be abandoned. Thus, people attempt to convince others of facts or states of affairs, to persuade them to do certain things or believe specific issues, or even to manipulate them.Since information may be true or false, when imparting it individuals are normally interested in appearing competent -i.e. skilled communicators and knowledgeable about specific issues-and benevolent -i.e. reliable or trustworthy informers (Sperber, 1994). Grice (1975) himself captured the intuition that communicators are usually expected to tell the truth or that telling it is beneficial for communication in his 'Maxim of Quality '. 3 Benevolence causes speakers to indicate certainty or lack of evidence about information by means of various ...