Evidential strategies in receiver-directed talk: The case of English inferential adverbs

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the types of evidential meaning expressed by clearly and obviously in receiver-directed talk, and to identify their interpersonal functions. It focuses on their uses in utterances containing the second person pronoun subject, excerpted from the British National Corpus. This study demonstrates that clearly and obviously are used to express inference, conjecture, assumption and self-evidence. The four notions can be organised on a cline, each showing a different degree of (inter)subjectivity, which is why this study argues that (inter)subjectification is responsible not only for their development from adverbs of manner into evidential adverbs (which is generally agreed on), but also for the different types of evidential meaning they express. It also argues that self-evidence is a post-evidential meaning of the two adverbs. This paper demonstrates that inferences, conjectures and assumptions function as strategies for eliciting a response from the addressee. Inferences and assumptions serve as prompts; conjectures have a challenging function. Inferences are also used to provide justification for the speech act performed by the speaker, while assumptions prepare the ground for the speaker's talk. Self-evidence is connected with the interpersonal functionality of concurrence and with textual functions performed by the two adverbs.