Evidentiality and illocution

Abstract

This paper attempts to show that the linguistic or discursive marking of evidentiality plays a role in the performance of illocutionary acts and that its closeness to, and difference from, the attribution of epistemic modality can be explained in the light of an analysis of their respective relations to illocution. A newspaper article, displaying lexical and textual features pertinent to both evidentiality and epistemic modality, is analysed in a speech-act oriented manner, paying attention to the participation framework and its polyphonicity, in order to collect live material for the discussion of theoretical distinctions and relations. Evidentiality is then described as related to the preparatory conditions for illocutionary acts, assertive ones in particular, while epistemic modalisation appears to serve mainly the function of mitigating or boosting the speaker's commitment to the truth of the assumption she expresses or reports.