Evidentials in entextualization
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Etsuko Oishi
Etsuko Oishi is a Professor of Linguistics at Tokyo University of Science. She received her Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh in 1999. Her research interests focus on Austinian speech act theory, context and contextualization, discourse analysis, modality and evidentiality, indexicality, implicature, media discourse, and translation. She has published many articles on context, appropriateness, apologies, evidentiality and modality, and referring and predicating. She is the co-editor (with Anita Fetzer) ofContext and contexts: Parts meet whole? (Benjamins 2011).
Abstract
The present paper examines the discursive functions of evidentials within the framework of Austinian speech act theory, and analyzes how they are used in a newspaper article. The discursive functions of evidentials are specified as their contribution to the illocutionary force.
By indicating the information source of a situation/event/thing in the world, the speaker (or the writer) testifies, reports, conjectures, or performs other expositive illocutionary acts (Austin [1962] 1975). An inherent feature of the illocutionary and perlocutionary effect is that the hearer (or the reader) is invited to share the interpretation of the situation/event/thing, and to adopt a certain attitude toward it. When the act is successful, the situation/event/thing is imported to the discourse as the content of the act, which becomes a ground for performing a further act. This function of evidentials is described as entextualization functions (Fetzer 2011): the discursive value of the given information is specified, where the specification is marked linguistically. Modals have similar entextualization functions.
About the author
Etsuko Oishi is a Professor of Linguistics at Tokyo University of Science. She received her Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh in 1999. Her research interests focus on Austinian speech act theory, context and contextualization, discourse analysis, modality and evidentiality, indexicality, implicature, media discourse, and translation. She has published many articles on context, appropriateness, apologies, evidentiality and modality, and referring and predicating. She is the co-editor (with Anita Fetzer) of Context and contexts: Parts meet whole? (Benjamins 2011).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Evidentiality in discourse
- Foregrounding evidentiality in (English) academic discourse: Patterned co-occurrences of the sensory perception verbs seem and appear
- Constructing evidence at Prime Minister's Question Time: An analysis of the grammar, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see
- Evidential embellishment in political debates during US campaigns
- Evidentiality, intersubjectivity and salience in Spanish and Catalan markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat
- Evidentials in entextualization
- Evidentiality and illocution
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Evidentiality in discourse
- Foregrounding evidentiality in (English) academic discourse: Patterned co-occurrences of the sensory perception verbs seem and appear
- Constructing evidence at Prime Minister's Question Time: An analysis of the grammar, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see
- Evidential embellishment in political debates during US campaigns
- Evidentiality, intersubjectivity and salience in Spanish and Catalan markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat
- Evidentials in entextualization
- Evidentiality and illocution
