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Part of
Self- and Other-Reference in Social Contexts: From global to local discourses
Edited by Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 342] 2024
► pp. 14–38

Chapter 2
Personal conviction against general knowledge

Epistemic commitment in online discussions of climate change

| University of Helsinki

This study analyses the functions of I know and we know in online discussions of climate change. These phrases locate the writer through the first-person pronouns and indicate epistemic certainty through the private verb know. The constructions are analysed in a corpus of climate change-related posts on the social media sites Twitter (currently X) and Reddit. As the writers discuss and argue for or against climate change being an environmental threat, I know and we know mark the writer’s subjective evaluation and how they position themselves with a like-minded audience: I know has interpersonal functions and we know is used to emphasise certainty by attributing knowledge to a larger epistemic community. This construction of knowledge situates the writer in the broader ideological climate debate.

Keywords: epistemic stance, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, climate change, social media, Twitter (X), Reddit
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical context
  • 3.Materials and methods
    • 3.1Communication on social media platforms
    • 3.2Corpus collection and analysis
  • 4.Functions identified
    • 4.1Epistemic certainty
      • 4.1.1Personal commitment
      • 4.1.2Collective commitment
    • 4.2Interpersonal functions
      • 4.2.1Interpersonal hedging
      • 4.2.2Empathy
    • 4.3Pragmatic marker
  • 5.Variation of functions in context
    • 5.1Comparing I and we as author perspectives
    • 5.2Comparison of subcorpora
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 March 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.342.02bir
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