Power dynamics and pragma-cultural sources of unsourced evidentiality in Persian
This paper investigates participants’ reflections on power relations embedded in the cultural-pragmatics of
unsourced evidentials in Persian texts. Using
Fairclough’s (2013) critical discourse
analysis, we adopted
Hanks’ (2018) ethnography of referential practices and
Foucault’s (1980) power dynamics to analyse 16 Persian texts through follow up interviews
and focus group discussions on two opposing pairs of texts – one pair on Iranian national identity versus Persian literature, and
another on Iranian politics versus religion. Our analysis revealed that unsourced evidentials appear in Persian predominantly due
to censorship and sometimes due to deliberate use by authors (e.g., for winning an argument). Text consumers often overlook
unsourced evidentials while reflecting on politico-religious referents, such as inequalities and bigotry. This has roots in
Persian literature, religion, and politics of power embedded in the culture, and the participants’ attention to inequalities and
discriminations has roots in referential practices in current Iranian discourse.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Typology of evidentiality
- 3.Conceptual framework
- 4.Research process
- 5.Engagement with unsourced evidentiality
- 5.1Unidentified individuals
- 5.2Unidentified institution/organisation
- 6.The pragmatics of evidentiality
- 6.1The pragmatics of production
- 6.2The pragmatics of consumption
- 7.Summary, limitations, and suggestions
- Acknowledgments
-
References
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Ambivalent reading: Ambivalence as a reading practice in critical literacy.
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