donderdag 14 juli 2022

Epistemic marker

 Epistemic expressions are defined here as linguistic items and constructions that express either degree of certainty (e.g. certainty, doubt, probability, epistemic necessity, or epistemic possibility) or source of information (e.g. direct, indirect-inferential, or indirect-reportive evidence), or both.


Genoemd in: artikel in JoP over argumentatie


This paper investigates speakers’ use of the French epistemic expression je sais pas (JSP) ‘I

don't know’ and its variants (e.g., chais pas ‘dunno’) in dispreferred responses to questions

e i.e., responses that disagree or disalign with the terms set up by the prior speaker's

action. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, I identify two distinct uses of the

expression in the same sequential environment that systematically differ in terms of the

respondent's gaze conduct and features of prosodic and morpho-phonological delivery:

[JSP þ gaze averted from recipient], comprising a semantically bleached and formally

reduced JSP (chais pas), serves to project an incipient dispreferred response e JSP here

works as a particle-like disagreement preface; [JSP þ gaze on recipient], comprising a fully

epistemic use that tends to be produced in fuller form (je sais pas), serves to accomplish a

dispreferred response of the ‘claiming lack of knowledge’ type.

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