This paper investigates conversational actions accomplished by a knowing speaker who takes a non-committal
epistemic stance using epistemic adverbs expressing uncertainty in Mandarin conversations. This study finds that adverbs of
uncertainty such as keneng, yexu, and dagai, are used predominantly by knowing
speakers, rather than unknowing speakers in Mandarin conversations. Moreover, most of these epistemically incongruent cases occur
in sequence-initiating actions. Three most common practices are announcements involved in a request project, announcements of
self-related positive news, and advice-giving actions. Adverbs of uncertainty are less frequently used by knowing speakers to take
a non-committal stance in the sequence-responsive actions. A common practice observed is responses to information-seeking
questions that have negative valence. Adverbs of uncertainty are adopted by knowing speakers to minimize disaffiliation caused by
these dispreferred actions such as requests, self-praising of accomplishments, advice-giving, and informing with negative
valence.
(2011) I don’t know as a Prepositioned Epistemic Hedge, Research on Language & Social Interaction, 44:4, 317–337.
Austin, John L.
1962 “How to do things with words: The William James lectures.” Cambridge, MA.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999 “Longman grammar of spoken and written English.” 89–110.
Biber, Douglas
2006 “Stance in spoken and written university registers.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 5 (2): 97–116.
Brown, Penelope, Stephen C. Levinson, and Stephen C. Levinson
. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Vol. 41. Cambridge university press 1987
Chafe, Wallace
1986 “Evidentiality in English conversation and academic writing.” Evidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology 201. 261–272.
Curl, Traci S., and Paul Drew
2008 “Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting.” Research on language and social interaction 41.2. 129–153.
Endo, Tomoko Koike
2010Expressing stance in Mandarin conversation: Epistemic and non-epistemic uses of wo juede. University of California, Los Angeles.
Fraser, Bruce
1980 “Conversational mitigation.” Journal of pragmatics 4.4. 341–350.
Heinemann, Trine
2006 “Will you or can’t you? Displaying entitlement in interrogative requests.” Journal of Pragmatics 38.7. 1081–1104.
Hsieh, CL.
2005 “Modal verbs and modal adverbs in Chinese: An investigation into the semantic source.” UST Working Papers in Linguistics, Graduate Institute of Linguistics 1, no. National Tsing Hua University.
Heritage, John
. “Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry.” Language in society 271, no. 31 (1998): 291–334.
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond
2005 “The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction.” Social psychology quarterly 68.1. 15–38.
Heritage, J.
2012Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), 1–29.
Heritage, J.
2012The epistemic engine: Sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), 30–52.
Hutchby, Ian
. “Aspects of recipient design in expert advice-giving on call-in radio.” Discourse processes 19, no. 2 (1995): 219–238.
Iwasaki, Shoichi, and Foong Ha Yap
2015 “Stance-marking and stance-taking in Asian languages.” Journal of Pragmatics 831. 1–9.
Kinnell, Ann Marie K., and Douglas W. Maynard
. “The delivery and receipt of safer sex advice in pretest counseling sessions for HIV and AIDS.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24, no. 4 (1996): 405–437.
Leppanen, V.
(1998) The straightforwardness of advice: Advice-giving in interactions between Swedish district nurses and
patients. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(2), 209–239.
Li, Wei, and Yue Li
. “My stupid wife and ugly daughter’: the use of pejorative references as a politeness strategy by Chinese
speakers.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 7, no. 3–4 (1996): 129–142.
Lim, Ni-Eng
2011 “From subjectivity to intersubjectivity: Epistemic marker wo juede in Chinese.” Current issues in Chinese linguistics, 265–300.
1977Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. Academic Press.
Levinson, Stephen C.
2013 “Action formation and ascription.” In The handbook of conversation analysis, 103–130. Wiley-Blackwell.
Lü, Shuxiang
1980 “Xiandai hanyu babai ci [Eight hundred words in modern Chinese].” Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.
Lyons, John
1977 “Semantics (vols i & ii).” Cambridge CUP.
Nuyts, J., & Auwera, J. van der
2016The Oxford handbook of modality and mood.
Nuyts, Jan
. “Modality: Overview and linguistic issues.” The expression of modality 1261 (2006).
Ochs, Elinor
1993 “Constructing social identity: A language socialization perspective.” Research on language and social interaction 26, no. 3. 287–306.
Palmer, Frank Robert
2001Mood and modality. Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, Anita
1978 “Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints.” Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, 79–112.
Pomerantz, Anita
1980 “Telling my side:“Limited access’ as a “fishing” device.” Sociological inquiry 50, no. 3–4. 186–198.
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shaped.”
Pomerantz, A. and Heritage, J.
2013Preference. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (eds J. Sidnell and T. Stivers).
Pudlinski, C.
(2005) The mitigation of advice. Calling for help: Language and social interaction in telephone helplines, 1431, 109.
Robinson, J. D.
(2013) Overall structural organization. The handbook of conversation analysis, 257–280.
Schegloff, E. A.
2007Sequence organization in interaction: a primer in conversation analysis. Igarss 2014.
Searle, John R.
1969Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Vol. 6261. Cambridge university press.
Searle, J. R.
(1976) A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in society, 5(1), 1–23.
Sheng, Lichun
2008“大概”,“也许” 和 “恐怕” 的语义, 语用分析 [Semantic meanings and Pragmatic Analysis of ‘dagai’ ‘yexu’ ‘kongpa’]“.” Chinese Language Learning. no. 1. 45–51.
Stivers, T.
2008Stance, alignment, and affiliation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affiliation.
Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig
eds.2011The morality of knowledge in conversation. Vol. 291. Cambridge University Press.
Tao, Hongyin
2003“从语音, 语法和话语特征看 “知道” 格式在谈话中的演化 [Phonological, grammatical, and discourse evidence for the emergence of zhidao
constructions].” Chinese Language 41. 291–302.
Tao, Hongyin
2016 “Disputed memory and the social interactive functions of remembering/forgetting expressions in Mandarin
conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 1061. 184–202.
. “A conversation analysis of self-praising in everyday Mandarin interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 43, no. 13 (2011): 3152–3176.
Yang, Bei
2016 “汉语认识情态表达“可能” “也许” “大概” “恐怕”用法对比分析 [A comparative study on Chinese epistemic modals ‘keneng’ ‘kexu’ ‘dagai’]‘kongpa’.” Journal of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. 27, no. 6. 33–41.
Yang, Ying, and Foong Ha Yap
2015 “I am sure but I hedge”: Fear expression kǒngpà as an interactive rhetorical strategy in Mandarin broadcast
talk.” Journal of Pragmatics 831. 41–56.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Rafaely, Daniella, Sonto Madonsela & Maria Marchetti-Mercer
2023. Licence to leave: the 'had-to' device as a method for producing normative accounts of migration. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:3 ► pp. 350 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.