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Evidentials, genre and epistemic vigilance

Abstract

In many languages with a grammaticalised evidential system, there are conventional associations between certain genres and evidentials so that evidentials may be used as genre indicators. Aikhenvald (2004) shows that that cross-­linguistically there is a particularly strong connection between reported evidentials (as opposed to indicators of other evidentiality types) and the traditional narrative genre (as opposed to other genres). I argue that this connection between reported evidentials and the traditional narrative genre can be explained on the basis that true reported evidentials on the one hand, and traditional narratives on the other, activate procedures dedicated to epistemic vigilance and argumentation in ways that other evidentials and other genres do not.

Abstract

In many languages with a grammaticalised evidential system, there are conventional associations between certain genres and evidentials so that evidentials may be used as genre indicators. Aikhenvald (2004) shows that that cross-­linguistically there is a particularly strong connection between reported evidentials (as opposed to indicators of other evidentiality types) and the traditional narrative genre (as opposed to other genres). I argue that this connection between reported evidentials and the traditional narrative genre can be explained on the basis that true reported evidentials on the one hand, and traditional narratives on the other, activate procedures dedicated to epistemic vigilance and argumentation in ways that other evidentials and other genres do not.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Three decades of relevance theory 1
  5. Part I: Issues on procedural meaning and procedural analyses
  6. The speaker’s derivational intention 33
  7. Cracking the chestnut 59
  8. Reference assignment in pronominal argument languages 81
  9. Conceptual and procedural information for verb tense disambiguation 103
  10. Part II: Discourse issues
  11. Relevance theory and contextual sources-centred analysis of irony 147
  12. Distinguishing rhetorical from ironical questions 173
  13. Part III: Interpretive processes
  14. Relevance theory, epistemic vigilance and pragmatic competence 193
  15. Evidentials, genre and epistemic vigilance 239
  16. Part IV: Rhetorical and perlocutionary effects of communication
  17. Rhetoric and cognition 261
  18. Perlocutionary effects and relevance theory 287
  19. Conclusion
  20. Some directions for future research in relevance-theoretic pragmatics 307
  21. Contributors 321
  22. Index 325
Relevance Theory
This chapter is in the book Relevance Theory
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.268.09ung

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction
  4. Three decades of relevance theory 1
  5. Part I: Issues on procedural meaning and procedural analyses
  6. The speaker’s derivational intention 33
  7. Cracking the chestnut 59
  8. Reference assignment in pronominal argument languages 81
  9. Conceptual and procedural information for verb tense disambiguation 103
  10. Part II: Discourse issues
  11. Relevance theory and contextual sources-centred analysis of irony 147
  12. Distinguishing rhetorical from ironical questions 173
  13. Part III: Interpretive processes
  14. Relevance theory, epistemic vigilance and pragmatic competence 193
  15. Evidentials, genre and epistemic vigilance 239
  16. Part IV: Rhetorical and perlocutionary effects of communication
  17. Rhetoric and cognition 261
  18. Perlocutionary effects and relevance theory 287
  19. Conclusion
  20. Some directions for future research in relevance-theoretic pragmatics 307
  21. Contributors 321
  22. Index 325
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