Evidential adjectives in English and Spanish journalistic opinion discourse

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of evidential adjectives in terms of their distribution and evidential values in three opinion genres (i.e. editorials, opinion columns and comment articles) in English and Spanish journalistic discourse, based on an ad hoc English-Spanish comparable corpus of newspaper opinion texts. The study focuses on two patterns with an evaluative and persuasive function, both of which conceal the role of the writer as conceptualizer (Marín-Arrese, 2013): ‘It + copular verb + ADJ + that/wh-/if/to-infinitive clause’ (Hunston and Sinclair, 2000) and ‘X + copular verb + ADJ’ (Gruber, 1993). Corpus examples were analyzed according to (1) Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM) values of copular verbs; (2) degree modification of evidential adjectives; (3) semantic preference and prosody; and (4) type of evidential justification. Results reveal similarities across languages and genres, with evidential adjectives occurring mainly in present tense indicative clauses where the adjective is not modified and has negative semantic preference and prosody. However, the analysis also unveils distinctive genre-related features in the distribution of evidential adjectives, with editorials showing the highest ratio here. Findings also suggest genre preferences and language-specific differences regarding the type of evidential justification employed (i.e. conceptual-based, perceptual-based or report-based inferences).