Aspects of “Interpersonal Grammar”

This thematic issue focuses on aspects of ‘interpersonal’ grammar. The underlying assumption, found in most functional frameworks, is that utterances are not only ‘representations’ of reality, but also encode the speaker’s attitude to, and his or her interactive intentions with, those representations. More specifically, this issue is concerned with the expression of modal position and evidential stance, as well as with the general notion of ‘grounding’ linguistic units, i.e. situating them relative to the speech event. For the definition of these notions, the contributors refer to work from functional traditions such as those of Halliday, Givón, Chafe, Dik and Langacker, as well as to other standard descriptions.