Cover not available
Part of
Emotion in Discourse
Edited by J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 302] 2019
► pp. 213–244

Chapter 9
My anger was justified surely?

Epistemic markers across British English and German Emotion Events

| University of Augsburg (Germany)

In this chapter, I explore the role of epistemic markers as sub-units of analysis in Emotion Events, in particular ANGER events, from a cross-linguistic perspective. The corpus study extends the Emotion Event Model and reports on findings based on 248 written narratives experimentally elicited from British English and German university students. Overall, German writers displayed more ANGER events than the British and males used more epistemic markers than females. In the British Emotion Events, more markers of ‘low’ certainty were used in contrast to more markers of ‘high’ certainty in the German ones. The findings underline the importance of epistemic markers for the modeling of emotion discourse.

Keywords: Emotion Event, epistemic markers, intersubjective positioning, contrastive discourse analysis, corpus linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Un-/certainty
    • 2.2A contrastive perspective – EM in (British) English and German
    • 2.3Emotion Events
      • 2.3.1A cognitive semantic model
      • 2.3.2Epistemic markers in emotion events – an extended model
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
    • 3.1The AWE corpus
    • 3.2Coding and analysis
  • 4.Contrastive findings
    • 4.1Emotion Events and ANGER events across British English and German
    • 4.2EM + [ANGER] – qualitative analysis
    • 4.3EM + [EMOTION]/ [ANGER] – forms and functions
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1EM in British and German Emotion Events Differ
    • 5.2Revisiting models on emotion discourse
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 27 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.09fro
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra
2004 Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Alba-Juez, Laura
2018 “Emotion and Appraisal Processes in Language: How Are They Related?” In The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction, ed. by María de los Ángeles Gómez González & J. Lachlan Mackenzie, 227‒250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
1935 [1981] The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, tr. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald
2008 Analyzing Linguistic Data. A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Maechler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker
2015 “Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4.” Journal of Statistical Software 67 (1): 1‒48. DOI logo.
Benítez-Castro, Miguel-Angel & Encarnación Hidalgo-Tenorio
This volume. “Rethinking Martin & White’s Affect Taxonomy: A Psychologically-Inspired Approach to the Linguistic Expression of Emotion.”
Becker, Anette
2009 “Modality and Engagement in British and German Political Interviews.” Languages in Contrast 9 (1): 5‒22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, Monika
2008 Emotion Talk across Corpora. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1987 “Indirectness or Politeness in Requests: Same or Different? Journal of Pragmatics 11: 131‒146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana & Elite Olshtain
1989 “Requests and Apologies: A Cross-Cultural Study of Speech-Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP).” Applied Linguistics 5 (3): 196‒213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bognelli, Ramona & Andrzej Zuczkowski
2008 Indicatori linguistici percettivi e cognitivi. Roma: Aracne.Google Scholar
Burnham, Kenneth P. & David R. Anderson
2002 Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretical Approach. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew
1998 Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael
1991 “The Sociocultural Dimension: The Dilemma of the German-Speaking Scholar.” In Subject-Oriented Texts, ed. by Hartmut Schröder, 49‒68. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coates, Jennifer
1995 “The Expression of Root and Epistemic Possibility in English.” In Modality in Grammar and Discourse, ed. by Joan J. Bybee & Suzanne Fleischman. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Croft, William & D. Allan Cruse
2004 Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Downing, Angela
2001 “ ‘Surely You Knew!’: Surely as a Marker of Evidentiality and Stance.” Functions of Language 8 (2): 251‒282.Google Scholar
Dziwirek, Katarzyna & Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
2010 Complex Emotions and Grammatical Mismatches: A Contrastive Corpus-Based Study. Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 16. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Eckart de Castilho, Richard, Éva Mújdricza-Maydt, Seid M. Yimam, Silvana Hartmann, Iryna Gurevych, Anette Frank & Chris Biemann
2016 “A Web-Based Tool for the Integrated Annotation of Semantic and Syntactic Structures.” Proceedings of the LT4DH Workshop at COLING. Osaka, Japan.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner
1998 “Conceptual Integration Networks.” Cognitive Science 22: 133–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2009 “Challenges in Contrast: A Function-To-Form Approach.” Languages in Contrast 9: 73‒97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “I think this is I mean perhaps this is too erm too tough a view of the world but I often think … Redundancy as Contextualization Device.” Language Sciences 33: 255‒267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “ I think, I mean and I believe in Political Discourse: Collocates, Functions and Distribution.” Functions of Language 21: 67‒94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita & Marjut Johansson
2010 “Cognitive Verbs in Context: A Contrastive Analysis of English and French Argumentative Discourse.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 15: 240‒266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fronhofer, Nina-Maria
2015 “Nearly a Bit Angry or Just So Happy – Intensifiers as Contextualization Cues.” Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée. Volume 2: 29‒49.Google Scholar
Accepted. “So Angry or Slightly Irritated of Sorts – ANGER Events in British English and German.” In Proceedings of “Emotion Concepts in Use”, Workshop at Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
In preparation. Emotion Concepts in Context. A Contrastive Analysis of British English and German Discourse.
Givón, Talmy
1993 English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction. 2 Volumes. Amsterdam/Philadelphia PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th
2013 Statistics for Linguistics with R. A Practical Introduction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. John
1992a “Contextualization and Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: Language as Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti & Charles Goodwin, 229‒252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1992b “Contextualization Revisited.” In The Contextualization of Language, ed. by Peter Auer & Aldo Di Luzio, 39‒53. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar. New York: Arnold.Google Scholar
House, Juliane
2006 “Communicative Styles in English and German.” European Journal of English Studies 10: 249‒267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunston, Susan
2007 “Using a Corpus to Investigate Stance Quantitatively and Qualitatively.” In Stancetaking in Discourse, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 27–48. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, Phil & Keith Oatley
1989 “The Language of Emotions: An Analysis of a Semantic Field.” Cognition and Emotion 3: 81‒123.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán
2000 Metaphor and Emotion. Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kranich, Svenja
2016 Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krawczak, Karolina & Dylan Glynn
2015 “Operationalizing Mirativity: A Usage-Based Quantitative Study of Constructional Construal in English.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13 (2): 353‒382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomasz
1989 “Towards a Typology of Contrastive Studies.” Contrastive Pragmatics, ed. by Wiesław Oleksy, 55‒72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
1990 Contrasting Languages: The Scope of Contrastive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George
1987 Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lampropoulou, Martha
2014 “The Expression of Emotions in Conditionals: A Study of Modern Greek Political Speech.” In Linguistic Approaches to Emotions in Context, ed. by Fabienne Baider & Georgeta Cislaru, 138‒157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W.
1987, 1991 Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (vols. 1 & 2). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia
2015 How to Do Linguistics with R: Data Exploration and Statistical Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara
(ed.) 1998 Lexical Semantics, Cognition and Philosophy. Łódź: Łódź University Press.Google Scholar
2011 “Events as They Are.” In Turning Points in the Philosophy of Language and Linguistics, ed. by Piotr Stalmaszczyk, 35‒63. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara & Katarzyna Dziwirek
(eds.) 2009 Studies in Cognitive Corpus Linguistics. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Barbara & Paul Wilson
2010 “A Contrastive Perspective on Emotions: Surprise.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 8: 321‒350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “English fear and Polish strach in Contrast: GRID Approach and Cognitive Corpus Linguistic Methodology.” In Components of Emotional Meaning: A Sourcebook, ed. by Johnny J. R. Fontaine, Klaus R. Scherer & Cristina Soriano, 425‒436. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Majid, Asifa
2012 “Current Emotion Research in the Language Sciences.” Emotion Review 4 (4): 432‒443. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Markkanen, Raija & Hartmut Schröder
1989 “Hedging as a Translation Problem in Scientific Texts.” In Special Languages: From Human Thinking to Thinking Machines, ed. by Christer Laurén & Marianne Nordman, 171‒179. London: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Martin, James R.
2004 “Mourning: How We Get Aligned.” Discourse & Society 15: 321‒344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James R. & Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Houndmills/New York: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oatley, Keith, Dacher Keltner & Jennifer M. Jenkins
2006 Understanding Emotions. Oxford/Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Parrot, Gerrod W.
2001 Emotions in Social Psychology. Philadelphia PA/Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Pavlenko, Aneta
2008 “Emotion and Emotion-Laden Words in the Bilingual Lexicon.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11: 147‒164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Planalp, Sally
1999 Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
R Core Team
2017 R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna. URL: [URL].
Schwarz-Friesel, Monika
2015 “Language and Emotion: The Cognitive Linguistic Perspective.” In Emotion in Language, ed. by Ulrike M. Lüdtke, 157‒174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie & Karin Aijmer
2007 The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty: A Corpus-Based Study of English Adverbs. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite, Marta Carretero & Jennifer Hinnell
2014 “Loving and Hating the Movies in English, German and Spanish.” Contrastive Linguistics 14 (1): 127‒161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talbot, Mary
2010 Language and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ungerer, Friedrich
1988 Syntax der englischen Adverbialien. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vološinov, Valentin N.
1995 Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, tr. by Ladislav Matjka & Irwin R. Titunik. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Watzlawick, Paul, Janet B. Bavelas & Don D. Jackson
1967 Pragmatics of Human Communication. A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
White, Peter R.R
2003 “Beyond Modality and Hedging: A Dialogic View of the Language of Intersubjective Stance.” Text 23 (2): 259‒284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilce, James M.
2009 Language and Emotion. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yimam, Seid M., Richard Eckart de Castilho, Iryna Gurevych & Chris Biemann
2014 “Automatic Annotation Suggestions and Custom Annotation Layers in WebAnno.” In Proceedings of ACL, demo session. Baltimore, MD, USA. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Larina, Tatiana & Douglas Mark Ponton
2022. I wanted to honour your journal, and you spat in my face: emotive (im)politeness and face in the English and Russian blind peer review. Journal of Politeness Research 18:1 ► pp. 201 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 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.