The communication of certainty/uncertainty within a Gospel passage (John 9:1-41)

This paper explores an argumentative discourse taken from John’s Gospel. The intention is to investigate the way speakers express their individual degree of certainty/uncertainty towards the piece of information they are giving or receiving. The paper analyzes the speakers’ different attitudes regarding the reliability of the communicated information (Epistemicity), focusing on the major linguistic markers that are used to support or criticize it and that reveal its truthfulness (Evidentiality). According to a pragmatic oriented approach, the paper reconstructs the whole discourse on the basis of a detailed scheme. This permits to analyze each dialogue as a coherent whole of speech acts, seen as argumentative moves aimed at bringing about a possible resolution of the difference of opinion, thus reaching an analytic overview.