Publications
Publication details [#57177]
Zuczkowski, Andrzej, Ilaria Riccioni and Ramona Bongelli. 2013. The communication of certainty and uncertainty in Italian political media discourses. In Fetzer, Anita, ed. The Pragmatics of Political Discourse. Explorations across cultures. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 228). John Benjamins. pp. 125–165.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
The present study analysed the lexical and morphosyntactic markers that communicate Certainty or Uncertainty and their pragmatic functions, in a corpus of contemporary Italian political discourses, both speeches and dialogues broadcast on television. The exemplary analysis of two speeches from the corpus shows the differences between a communication oriented towards Certainty and another oriented towards Uncertainty and between their pragmatic implications. The exemplary analysis of two dialogues shows their pronounced conflictual nature, which manifests itself mostly when the politicians of opposite parties accuse each other of saying something false through the use of Certainty markers.