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Relevance Theory: Recent developments, current challenges and future directions
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 268] 2016
► pp. 239–258

Evidentials, genre and epistemic vigilance

| Norwegian University of Science and Technology

In many languages with a grammaticalised evidential system, there are conventional associations between certain genres and evidentials so that evidentials may be used as genre indicators. Aikhenvald (2004) shows that that cross-­linguistically there is a particularly strong connection between reported evidentials (as opposed to indicators of other evidentiality types) and the traditional narrative genre (as opposed to other genres). I argue that this connection between reported evidentials and the traditional narrative genre can be explained on the basis that true reported evidentials on the one hand, and traditional narratives on the other, activate procedures dedicated to epistemic vigilance and argumentation in ways that other evidentials and other genres do not.

Keywords: argumentation, comprehension, epistemic vigilance, evidentiality, genre
Published online: 20 October 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.268.09ung
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Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Figueras Bates, Carolina
2019. Razonamiento y Vigilancia Epistémica: Una Explicación Relevantista de los Evidencialespor lo vistoyse ve que. Pragmática Sociocultural / Sociocultural Pragmatics 7:1 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
Lubberger, Beate
2020. Chapter 5. Metarepresentation markers in Indus Kohistani. In Relevance Theory, Figuration, and Continuity in Pragmatics [Figurative Thought and Language, 8], ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Padilla Cruz, Manuel
2020. Chapter 3. Evidential participles and epistemic vigilance. In Relevance Theory, Figuration, and Continuity in Pragmatics [Figurative Thought and Language, 8], ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo

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