Cover not available
Part of
Perspectives on Evidentiality in Spanish: Explorations across genres
Edited by Carolina Figueras Bates and Adrián Cabedo
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 290] 2018
► pp. 147–172

Chapter 7
‘No sé’

Epistemic stance, evidential grounding and scope in unplanned oral genres

| Pompeu Fabra University
The aim of this paper is to analyze and discuss the semantic-pragmatic scope that epistemic phrases such as Spanish ‘no sé’ (I don’t know) play in oral opinion reports, a genre that implies a strong presence of value judgements and engagement on the part of the speaker.
The stance frame that such epistemic phrases provide as fixed epistemic formulas has been pointed out by several authors that work in the interactional epistemic domain (Kärkkäinen 2003, 2007; Scheibman 2000, 2001; Thompson 2002), exploring whether the scope of these formulas (I think, I don’t know, I guess, I thought and I remember) extends over something that has yet to be verbalized (forward scope) or over something that has already been verbalized in the preceding turn (backward scope). The working hypothesis is that, contrary to conversational genre, where such fixed formulas tend to provide a forward scope, in opinion reports the scope is twofold, with a stronger presence of backward scope, in the case of ‘no sé’. Findings suggest: (i) strong presence of the epistemic phrasal form (‘no sé’), rather than the predicative one, in the genre analyzed; (ii) predominant role of ‘no sé’ as attitude marker, to convey affect (to construe emotional responses), judgement (to convey moral evaluations) and appreciation (to construe the value of things).
Keywords: oral genre, epistemic phrase, parenthetical, attitude, stance, appraisal, commitment, Spanish, Catalan, English, I don’t know , no sé
Article outline
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Pragmatic functions of no sé in unplanned oral genres
    • 2.1Avoiding assessment
    • 2.2 Prefacing disagreement
    • 2.3 Avoiding explicit disagreements
    • 2.4 Avoiding commitment
    • 2.5Minimization of impolite beliefs
    • 2.6Marker of uncertainty
  • 3. Stance, subjectivity and grammaticization of no sé
  • 4. Position and scope of no sé in unplanned oral genres
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.290.07gon
References (33)
References
Baumgarten, Nicole, and Juliane House. 2010. I think and I don’t know in English as Lingua Franca and Native English Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 42, 1184–1200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2006. “Epistemological Positioning and Evidentiality in English News Discourse: A Text-Driven Approach.” Text & Talk 26(6): 635–660. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. 1966/1971. “Subjectivity in Language.” In Problems in General Linguistics, ed. by Émile Benveniste, 223–230. University of Miami Press: Coral Gables.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, and Paul Hopper (eds.). 2001. Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Susan, and Douglas Biber. 2001. “Adverbial Marking of Stance in Speech and Writing.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. by Susan Hunston, and Geoffrey Thompson, 56–73. Oxford University Press: Oxford.Google Scholar
Cornillie, Bert. 2010. “An Interactional Approach to Epistemic and Evidential Adverbs in Spanish Conversation.” In Linguistic Realization of Evidentiality in European Languages, ed. by Gabriele Diewald, and Elena Smirnova, 309–330. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 2003. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Diani, Giuliana. 2004. “The Discourse Functions of I don’t know in English Conversation.” In Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora, ed. by Karin Aijmer, and Anna-Brita Stenström, 157–171. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behaviour. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
González, Montserrat. 2015. “From Truth-attesting to Intensification: The Grammaticalization of Spanish La verdad and Catalan La veritat .” Discourse Studies 17(2): 162–181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Evidentiality, Intersubjectivityand Salience in Spanish andCatalan Markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat .” Intercultural Pragmatics 11(3): 411–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
González, Montserrat, Paolo Roseano, Joan Borràs, and Pilar Prieto (2017), “Epistemic and Evidential marking in Discourse: Effects of Register and Debatability.” Essays on Evidentiality. Vol.186–187, 68–87. DOI logo
González, Montserrat. 2004. Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative. The Case of English and Catalan. Pragmatics & Beyond NS 122, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoye, Leo Francis. 2008. “Evidentiality in Discourse: A Pragmatic and Empirical Account.” In Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics, ed. by Jesús Romero-Trillo, 151–174. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunter. 2007. “Position, Prosody and Scope: The Case of English Comment Clauses.” Vienna English Working Papers (VIEWS) 16(1): 3–38.Google Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise. 2010. “Position and Scope of Epistemic Phrases in Planned and Unplanned American English.” In New Approaches to Hedging, ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck, Wiltrud Mihatsh, and Stefan Schneider, 203–236. Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “The Role of I guess in Conversational Stancetaking.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 183–219. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R. and White, P. 2005. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2001. “Subjectivity as an Evidential Dimension in Epistemic Modal Expressions.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 383–400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roseano, Paolo, Montserrat González, Joan Borràs, and Pilar Prieto. 2016. “Communicating Epistemic stance: How Speech and Gesture Patterns Reflect Epistemicity and Evidentiality.” Discourse Processes 53(3): 135–174.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scheibman, Joanne. 2000. “ I dunno… A Usage-Based Account of the Phonological Reduction of don’t in American English Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 32(1): 105–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. “Local Patterns of Subjectivity in Person and Verb Type in American English Conversation.” In Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, ed. by Joan L. Bybee, and Paul J. Hopper, 61–89. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sidnell, Jack. 2012. “’Who knows best?’. Evidentiality and Epistemic Asymmetry in Conversation.” Pragmatics and Society 3(2): 294–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. 2002. “‘Object Complements’ and Conversation: Towards a Realistic Account.” Studies in Language 26(1): 125–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Sandra A., and Anthony Mulac. 1991. “A Quantitative Perspective on the Grammaticization of Epistemic Parentheticals in English.” In Approaches to grammaticalization, Vol. II: Focus on types of grammatical markers, ed. by Elizabeth C. Traugott, and Bernd Heine, 313–329. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1995. “Subjectification in Grammaticalisation.” In Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives, ed. by Dieter Stein, and Susan Wright, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsui, Amy B. M. 1991. “The Pragmatic Functions of I don’t know .” Text 11: 607–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Albelda Marco, Marta
2020. On the Mitigating Function of the Spanish Evidential se ve que. Corpus Pragmatics 4:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Cabedo Nebot, Adrián & Carolina Figueras Bates
2018. Chapter 1. Evidentiality in discourse. In Perspectives on Evidentiality in Spanish [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 290], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 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.