Epistemic Scale Research Articles

Disagreement, epistemic stance and contrastive marking in Catalan parliamentary debate

The aim of this paper is to offer a qualitative analysis of the relationship between disagreement, epistemic stance and contrast in parliamentary debate. To this end, all disagreeing moves including both an epistemic stance marker and a contrastive marker equivalent to but have been identified in a corpus of parliamentary debates in Catalan. The epistemic stance markers have been classified considering three main factors: type of marker (epistemic, evidential, attitudinal), epistemic scale (certainty-uncertainty) and position (either in the thesis or in the antithesis). The approach adopted encompasses interactional linguistics and pragmalinguistics as it considers how context variables, such as those related to genre, have an influence on the use and discourse effects of markers of epistemic stance and contrast. The main research questions are two: (i) how genre norms have an incidence on the expression of disagreement and the interpretation of epistemic stance markers, and (ii) how epistemicity and contrast interact with disagreement in parliamentary debate in order to reinforce the speakers' argumentation and block the opponent's opinion, as either questionable or shared knowledge. The analysis shows that disagreeing moves in the corpus establish a long-distance relation with a previous stretch of discourse and trigger a polyphonic strategy that can be expressed through a contrastive construction where epistemic markers qualify either the thesis or the antithesis. In both cases, the disagreeing argument (i.e. the antithesis) is thus reinforced not only when the epistemic stance marker expresses certainty but also when it expresses uncertainty.

LA MODALIDAD EPISTÉMICA EN ELE: RETOS EN LA DESCRIPCIÓN DE LA SEMÁNTICA DE VARIAS UNIDADES EN MATERIALES DIDÁCTICOS. EPISTEMIC MODALITY IN SFL: CHALLENGES IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SEMANTICS OF SOME UNITS IN A CORPUS OF DIDACTIC MATERIALS

Spanish possesses a vast array of items that codify the speaker’s degree of certainty or doubt (i.e., epistemic modality), such as quizá, igual, seguramente or sin duda. Little attention has been devoted to them in the field of Spanish as a Foreign Language, especially regarding their semantics. The aim of this article is to show that some of the semantic descriptions of such items reveal inconsistencies in a variety of didactic sources, and this might hinder students from mastering them. We focus on three case studies involving (a) where certain items are allocated in the epistemic scale, (b) how a group of similar expressions is treated, and (c) how the semantics of an adverb is described vis-à-vis its cognates in other languages.

What does tourism mean for Chinese rural migrant workers? Perspectives of perceived value

AbstractThis research explores Chinese rural migrant workers' perceived value of tourism from a social tourism perspective. The findings are based on 20 semi‐structured interviews and highlight the benefits that tourism can bring to Chinese rural migrant workers. Theoretically, the study led to the developed of a six‐dimension life work social self‐realization emotional epistemic scale that shows Chinese rural migrant workers' perceived value of tourism based on life value, work value, social value, self‐realization value, emotional value, and epistemic value. Practically, the research provides useful suggestions for government on policy development and opportunities for the design of tourism products for Chinese rural migrant workers. This study challenges the existing understanding of perceived value, which has highlighted tourism value from a macro perspective but neglected to look at perceived value on a micro or individual level.

Epistemic Modal Adverbs and Gradability in the English and Serbian Language

This paper discusses the importance of modal adverbs and its implications for researching modality in general on examples from the English and Serbian languages and points to some theoretical lackings in Serbian literature on modality. The analysis of the corpus examples is based on the theory of modality as epistemic deixis with the aim of showing that epistemic modal adverbs express the notion of degree on an epistemic scale in a way that traditionally discussed modal verbs are unable to do. The semantic gradability of modal adverbs is discussed in epistemic contexts where they can occur on their own, or collocate with modal verbs. The paper also focuses on combinations of epistemic adverbs with other adverbs that have an effect on the degree of modality expressed, either a heightening or lowering effect.

O modalnim prilozima u engleskom i njima odgovarajućim oblicima u srpskom jeziku

This paper deals with a contrastive analysis of modal adverbs in the English language and their corresponding forms in the Serbian language. The analysis is based on an eclectic model, which represents a combination of the theory of metaphorical extension and the theory of modality as epistemic deixis. The paper focuses on combinations of modal adverbs and modal verbs in which the adverb modifies, complements or transforms the meaning of the verb. A modal adverb and a modal verb may be combined provided that they both express the same or similar modal meanings. A modal adverb and a modal verb from the opposite extremes of the epistemic scale cannot be combined because of collocational restrictions. The degree of modality expressed by modal adverbs may also be additionally intensified by other adverbs, which are called intensifiers. The analysis includes syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of modal adverbs. The contrastive analysis shows that English and Serbian are typologically similar languages.

Travelling Certainties

This article builds on Annie Brisset’s chapter ‘Clémence Royer, ou Darwin en colère’ (2002:173–203), in which she argues that Clémence Royer’s French translation (1861) of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) was adapted to the French positivistic style, that Royer’s own voice was injected into the translation and that the French translation conveyed a higher degree of certainty than the English original. The comparative study presented here investigates whether two Dutch translations (Winkler 1860 and Hellemans 2000) show similar shifts in certainty or epistemic stance (Kärkkäinen 2003). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted of Darwin’s chapter four on ‘Natural Selection’ and its two translations, focusing on a set of modal words and using an adapted version of Martin and White’s epistemic scale of ranking (2005). Comparisons between Darwin’s text and its translations reveal a positivistic voice, similar to Royer’s, in Winkler’s nineteenth-century translation but not in the contemporary translation by Hellemans. The findings are discussed in terms of target audiences, language-inherent characteristics and general translation tendencies.

Cognition, epistemic scale, and functions of the Old Japanese question particle ka

This paper first shows how the polysemy of a single question particle ka (self-addressed questions, exclamation, rhetorical questions, wishes, and regrets) in Old Japanese can be accounted for in a unified way, by using Akatsuka's (1985) epistemic scale and speaker attitudes. In addition, this paper points out that there are remarkable similarities between Maynard's (1995) information status and Akatsuka's epistemic scale, and between Maynard's typology of Modern Japanese rhetorical interrogatives (non-information-seeking interrogatives) and that of Old Japanese ka-type questions proposed in this paper. In a broader perspective, this study intends to clarify the concept of doubt, a key concept in interrogatives in both Japanese and Western linguistics. It is argued that doubt represents the various speaker attitudes in the irrealis domain such as negative conviction, surprise, and uncertainty. It is also claimed that what has been referred to as intensity of doubt can be understood as the shift of the speaker attitude on the axis of the epistemic scale.

Conditionals and the Epistemic Scale

The conceptual domains REALIS and IRREALIS form an epistemic scale representing a speaker's subjective evaluation of the reality of a given situation. This scale accounts for grammatical phenomena such as conditionals, Japanese complementizer choice, and 'evidentials' in Turkish, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. Conditionals are identifiable not by their syntactic forms, but by speaker attitudes within the IRREALIS division of the scale. Surprise is also an IRREALIS phenomenon, since it takes time for newly-learned information to be assimilated into one's established body of knowledge.*