5.1Unidentified individuals

The first example of this type is extracted from the text against Ferdowsi, where the author includes a direct quotation on behalf of unidentified persons:

Pedram, in the interview, said:

The author’s knowledge about literature and literary theories is limited. Sometimes, writers seem to spread negative ideas by putting vulgar or rude words into the mouth of villains to show iniquity in society or criticise some people.

Pedram unfolds the information in the text based on Ferdowsi’s literary vision and its association with referential practices. By making a covert contrast between Ferdowsi as a symbol of knowledge and text, he is establishing a referential practice. His attitudes about Ferdowsi led Pedram to blame the text’s author for their lack of knowledge of literary theories, which informed his counterargument that Ferdowsi has used villains to portray how inequality exists in society. This meaningful chain is understood through the pragmatic knowledge and priority of referential practices for Pedram. However, his tendency to take notice of the above-mentioned referential practices (e.g., Ferdowsi, Persian literature or literary theories) gave rise to his disregard for the unsourced evidential (i.e., “some of Ferdowsi’s advocates”). In another example, from the same text, Soroush mentioned in the FGD that he disagreed with the following sentence:

Soroush mentioned:

There are two points in the sentence: first, the author is racist. S/He has a derogatory tone as s/he considers Persians in an inferior position to Turks. Second, what is wrong with earning a living by composing poems? It is like doing research and earning money like a postdoctoral researcher.

Soroush initially pays attention to the mention of “Turkic Kings”, which has racist connotations for him. He attributes this to author’s derogatory tone and the implied inferiority of Persians compared to Turks. Then, he discusses that the author’s conclusion is not valid since in the modern world, people do various jobs, such as research, to earn money, and writing poetry could also be considered a job. This could be attributable to Soroush’s academic journey. The interplay between these referential practices is significant in that, although he overlooked the use of “so many Persian poets” as an instance of unsourced evidential, his orientation to racism, as well as other referents, sparked his critical reflection.

In another example, Elnaz in an interview on the text in favour of Ferdowsi criticised the following sentence:

She said:

Feminism in Iran doesn’t mean to be anti-men. Men have always discriminated against women in history and now some women are standing against this suppression.

Elnaz previously mentioned she holds feminist attitudes and interpreted the text based on her gender-related perspectives (for feminist identity construction, see Hirschey Marrese 2021Hirschey Marrese, Olivia 2021 “The Emergent Construction of Feminist Identity in Interaction.” Pragmatics 31 (3): 406–429. ). Her orientation to sexism, as a referential practice, instigated her critical reflections on the text. Thereafter, she related sexism in Iran to bigotry and suppression. Such a pragmatic association between referential practices (e.g., sexism and bigotry) creates a thread to the ideas in her discussion. However, she did not question the text for not revealing the name of some of “recent famous feminist women” who hold negative attitudes towards men. The next example is related to an FGD in favour of Rouhani when Nasrin questioned the following sentence:

Nasrin said:

I agree with the sentence as in the previous government, the international relations were really murky. Iran was a very isolated country. Nowadays, the situation is slightly better.

Nasrin agreed with the sentence based on her political viewpoints, but she did not question the text for the use of the two instances of unsourced evidentials, namely, “some of the General Managers” and “some of our ministers”. The text does not clarify the identities of those general managers, their nationalities, and does not give extra information about the organisations they work for. Similarly, they do not know the names of those ministers who are shunned by some general managers. The final example in this section concerns Elnaz’s attitude towards the text against Rouhani:

Elnaz mentioned she was ambivalent about the texts because:

I really doubt whether and how the Basket of Goods can be a mistake. The text doesn’t discuss on what basis this is a mistake. When we write our thesis, our supervisors expect us to discuss our ideas deeply, but this text fails to do so.

While Elnaz did not comment that the text has used an unsourced evidential (“some sociologists”) or why it does not give extra information about those sociologists, she reflected on the text critically, which can be attributed to her academic journey. In her PhD journey Elnaz has learned that a superficial indication as such is not convincing; the author of the text should have rather dug deeper into addressing different aspects of that mistake.

5.2Unidentified institution/organisation

In an example, taken from the text against Rouhani, Pedram disagreed with the following sentence:

In the FGD, he added:

The text, shallowly, claims that immorality in the society was a product of the previous government. That is preposterous. It means we didn’t have immorality 10 years before that, let’s say. The IRI has been full of corruption from the very first day.

Although Pedram did not analyse the unsourced evidential in text (“some governmental organisations”), he prudently evaluated the text critically. If we pragmatically unfold his referential practices, we see his attitudes towards immorality, different governments in Iran, and the history of the IRI regarding corruption, which are meaningfully connected to each other. This is associated with his political orientation, which leads him to pay attention to certain referential practices (e.g., immorality in IRI) as related to the habitus of political genres, and overlook others (i.e., unsourced evidentials). Likewise, Nasrin was ambivalent about the following sentence from the text against Rouhani based on this logic that the text is deliberately vague:

In an interview conducted after the reading, Nasrin stated:

I was a political activist when I was a student in Iran. I participated in similar meetings. I am not sure how the text claims that some people did not have the right to ask questions. So, why did they participate in those sessions? Based on my experience, I am not sure how accurate this sentence is.

In association with her identities, Nasrin analyses the text by making connections between student organisations, political activism, and participation in political meetings as referential practices. This sequence of referential practices establishes her critical reflection on the text despite the fact that she ignored “some of the student bodies” as an instance of unsourced evidential. The next example from the same text also demonstrates another instance of unsourced evidential:

In this sentence, “certain organisations” is an instance of unsourced evidential as the text does not reveal additional information about the organisations which had the right to ask questions from the president. The participants did not question this sentence. Another example comes from the text in favour of Rouhani:

Elnaz, in the FGD, mentioned:

Well, the whole country is run by surveillance. People are always monitored not to disobey the ideologies advocated by the regime.

Elnaz interpreted this sentence drawing on her lived experience in Iran. She indirectly criticised the IRI based on the reasoning that the intelligence services watch people and they demand that people’s behaviour be congruent with the regime’s agenda. As there are multiple intelligence agencies in Iran and the text does not reveal extra information about them, the text uses an instance of an unsourced evidential. However, the referential practice for Elnaz is the notion of surveillance rather than the unsourced evidential.

6.1The pragmatics of production

At the level of production, unsourced evidentials can be discussed through Foucault (1978Foucault, Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books., 27) as “silence in discourse” and in terms of how they appear in texts (Fairclough 2013Fairclough, Norman 2013 Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ). Silence in discourse can be defined as concepts, ideas or objects (i.e., remarks) which the subjects avoid mentioning. Drawing on Foucault (1978)Foucault, Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books., when certain discourses do not allow an idea to be expressed, that idea and those related to it are unexpressed. For example, when sex becomes taboo, a wide array of objects including homosexuality, sex with underage people, and sex education become taboo. Sexual phrases are repressed as if they do not exist. The language of sex is restricted, and the subjects should not discuss it publicly. However, those repressions have led to the proliferation of discourses about sex so that sex appears in covert ways while “authorised vocabulary” and a “rhetoric of allusion and metaphor” are codified (Foucault 1978Foucault, Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books., 17). Such changes and vocabulary are controlled and rigorously defined. As an example, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, all premarital sexual activities or those out of the institution of marriage were banned and the language of sex was strictly prohibited by the ruling clergies. However, two oppressive decades passed, and they noticed the language of sex and sexual activities cannot be repressed. Referring to religious discourses, they divulged Sigheh, which is a temporary marriage in Islam. These days, Shiite clerics promote Sigheh publicly and even encourage it. Such a drastic change is related to the proliferation of discourses after a period of silence.

Firstly, there is the possibility that the authors use unsourced evidentials to hide certain ideas (e.g., open criticism of the IRI) since those ideas, as objects of certain discourses (e.g., political discourses), should be kept silent, whereby pragmatic knowledge would likely help recover the hidden information. Examples (6), (8), and (9) above could be related to this possibility. In Example (6), the author did not mention the name of “some governmental organisations”. Similarly, in Example (8), the author did not specify “certain governmental organisations/institutions”. A reason for hiding information about these organisations can be potential consequences for the prosecution of authors. In Iran, every governmental organisation has a security sector which has prosecution power against individuals and other organisations. As Goldman (2016Goldman, Lisa 2016 “Silence one Story and Another is Born: Experience of Censorship in Iran and the UK in 2010.” In Global Insights on Theatre Censorship, ed. by Catherine O’Leary, Diego Santos Sanchez, and Michael M. Thompson, 79–92. New York: Routledge., 81) mentions: “avoidance of being caught is a permanent feature of life in Iran”. In Example (9), “some intelligence services” can be related to several intelligence services in Iran, which have enormous power including the powers to persecute, arrest, and imprison. Hence, the author might not directly mention their names.

As regards repression and silence in discourse, speaking subjects (in this case, authors) should avoid speaking about particular topics, directly and everywhere, since power defines them as inexistent. Such repression is associated with censorship and continues until power defines those topics are not banned any longer. As power is “permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing” (Foucault 1978Foucault, Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books., 93), it monitors all the “movements” by speaking subjects in terms of what they say. This does not mean that censorship is a state through which power is exercised, but to regulate silences in discourse, power wants speaking subjects to talk about certain topics indirectly or use authorised vocabulary, metaphors, and so on. Proliferation of discourses, as can be associated with words and vocabulary, might occur at this stage so that certain words or vocabulary (i.e., unsourced evidentiality) emerge to the surface and appear in texts. In this study, authors ostensibly used unsourced evidentials as legitimate vocabulary or acceptable language to avoid questioning certain people or organisations (e.g., the Supreme Leader) directly. They aimed to criticise high-ranking authorities, military officials, and clerics, whose power come from political discourses (Fairclough 2013Fairclough, Norman 2013 Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ), but they are not supposed to do it explicitly as they could face punishment.

A second possibility is the abundance and repetition of silences in discourses, which may lead to normalisation (Foucault 1975Foucault, Michel 1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.). Normalisation is a process through which subjects learn to behave normally based on specified normal behaviour. In such a process, discourses and power relations within discourses set some norms, and subjects need to adapt to these norms. In fact, “normalisation imposes homogeneity” (Foucault 1975Foucault, Michel 1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books., 184), which means that one of the workings of normalisation is spreading ideas, attitudes, and even language that should be used uniformly by the subjects. In the texts above, some unsourced evidentials have been used as a result of normalisation which have historical roots. Shokouhi and Latifi (2019)Shokouhi, Hossein, and Mehdi Latifi 2019 “Empowerment and Knowledge Transformation through Critical Reading and Thinking: A Case Study of Iranian University Students.” In Transformation and Empowerment through Education: Reconstructing our Relationship with Education, ed. by Raqib Chowdhury, 58–72. Milton: Routledge. discussed that the use of indirect language in Persian is a historical phenomenon. Poets and authors have used indirectness as a device to avoid being punished by despotic rulers. They mentioned that the same is true in a student-teacher situation or possibly any situation where individuals are expected to follow rules of reverence which are socio-culturally defined. In Example (1), the author seems to avoid mentioning the names of some famous scholars. In Example (3), the author does not want to mention the name of some Persian feminists who have the support of a large group of people. Similarly, in Example (4), if the author had revealed the names of some ministers, that would have been considered disrespectful. Hence, historically and in association with power relations and punishment, authors are demonstrating their normalised behaviour by using instances of unsourced evidentials.

However, normalisation can be subsequently associated with the genealogy of racism (Foucault 2003Foucault, Michel 2003 “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976. New York: Picador.). Racism, as Foucault discusses, is a discursive construction which circulates knowledge and truth in two ways. First, racism can be associated with struggles between different races, otherwise called “discourse of race struggle” (Foucault 2003Foucault, Michel 2003 “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976. New York: Picador., 81). Second, when the “discourse of race struggle” takes a revolutionary form, it turns into state racism based on which states are responsible for the purity and protection of whole races. Iran is a country with different ethnic groups (e.g., Persians, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, etc.) who have ruled the country at different stages of its history and have competed over political power (Katouzian 2010Katouzian, Homa 2010 The Persians: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Iran. New Haven: Yale University Press.). This competition over political power has impacted different aspects of social life including language domination. In Example (2), the author uses the words “Persian” and “Turkic” in a way such that they can be associated with “discourse of race struggle”. While the text does not mention the name of “some Persian poets”, the Turkish-speaking author labels Persian poets as eulogisers of Turkic kings and inferior to them.

Such a tone and the use of unsourced evidentials are associated with racialisation and normalisation, linked with resistance. Foucault (2003Foucault, Michel 2003 “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976. New York: Picador., 69) discusses that “confrontation between races, about the race struggle that goes on within the nations and laws” can create aspects of social normalisation due to “internal racism” which is promoted by the states, otherwise, the revolutionary form of discourse of race struggle. In modern Iran, internal racism is created for the purpose of social normalisation by the government declaring Persian as the official language and banning non-Persian languages at schools, universities, and in official affairs (see Zaini and Ollerhead 2019Zaini, Amin, and Sue Ollerhead 2019 “Reverse Contrastive Rhetoric in Expository Writing: Transfer and Power Relations at Work.” Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 37 (1): 41–61. ) while there are instances of resistance through objecting to the dominance of the Persian language in non-Persian regions (Asgharzadeh 2007Asgharzadeh, Alireza 2007 Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist, Racism, and Democratic Struggles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ). However, the Persian people and the Persian language can be the subject to racism specifically by Azari people who speak Turkish in Iran. Informed by pan-Turkic identities and Turkish nationalism, some Azari people argue that the Persian empire has been ruled by Turkic dynasties and Persians are inferior to Turks (Souleimanov 2011Souleimanov, Emil 2011 “The Evolution of Azerbaijani Identity and the Prospects of Secessionism in Iranian Azerbaijan.” Connections 11 (1): 77–84. ). In Examples (1) and (2), and thorough the text against Ferdowsi, the Turkish-speaking author’s stance against the Persian poets seems to be a reaction to the dominance of the Persian language in modern Iran. The author tries to attack Persian poetry through devaluing Persian literature while he supports his ideas through the use of unsourced evidentials. This reaction against the state-supported normalisation can have roots in being deprived of receiving education in one’s mother tongue, using another language for one’s official affairs (i.e., Persian), and considering one’s race (i.e., Azari and Turkic) unprivileged.

A third possibility is related to the authors’ deliberate intention to take advantage of employing unsourced evidentials. This can be related to truth obfuscation called “bullshit” or “humbug” (Frankfurt 2005Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005 On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. , 9). Frankfurt (2005)Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005 On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. clarifies there is a difference between someone who tells lies and someone who tells bullshit. Liars know that they tell lies and they deliberately do so. However, a bullshitter does not feel a concern whether something said is true or false. They want to win an argument or prove themselves right to reach their goals. Although it is practically very hard to discuss whether an instance of unsourced evidential is an example of lie or humbug, one can suggest that unsourced evidentiality can work as a linguistic device to obfuscate the truth. It can be an instance of bullshit or humbug since the author is uncertain of the accuracy of their statement. Text authors, as a result of inadequate information, may use unsourced evidentials to achieve their goals (e.g., winning an argument). As related to the notions of normalisation and racism discussed above, the text against Ferdowsi, penned by a Turkish-speaking Iranian author, has numerous instances of unsourced evidentials specifically when it comes to Turkish and Persian languages, Persian poets, and “discourse of race struggle”. While this paper does not claim that the text features examples of humbug or bullshit, the instances of unsourced evidentials employed by the author can be categorised within the range of bullshit or humbug.

6.2The pragmatics of consumption

Drawing on Shokouhi and Latifi (2019)Shokouhi, Hossein, and Mehdi Latifi 2019 “Empowerment and Knowledge Transformation through Critical Reading and Thinking: A Case Study of Iranian University Students.” In Transformation and Empowerment through Education: Reconstructing our Relationship with Education, ed. by Raqib Chowdhury, 58–72. Milton: Routledge., we argued that the appearance of unsourced evidentials in modern Persian texts has historical reasons. Firstly, Iran has been governed by autocratic rulers for at least three millennia and Iranian poets and prosaists have used an indirect language as a technique, to criticise kings who did not accept even the lightest criticism. Unsourced evidentials were a device for censoring certain information while authors could still be critical of the rulers. Sa’di was a Persian poet and prosaist in the 13th century who used this technique. In his book, Golestan, Sa’di tells some tales about people whose identities cannot be revealed. Not enough information about the whereabouts of the events and the time of their occurrence is given. In other words, they seem to be his own creation, such as expressions like paadeshaahi boud ‘there was once a king’ or haakemi boud ‘there was once a ruler’, or they could be based on analogies of the events in different lands in Asia that he visited in his long journeys. Primary and secondary school students are exposed to Sa’di’s poems and prose and are often asked to memorise the poems. The habitual engagement with this kind of discourse which contains instances of unsourced evidentials can be a potential reason for taking them as granted.

This can be further related to governmentality as Foucault (1994a)Foucault, Michel 1994a “On the Government of Living.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 81–86. New York: The new Press. and Ball (2013)Ball, Stephen J. 2013 Foucault, Power and Education. New York: Routledge. mention. Governmentality, an umbrella term, can be applied to a set of techniques which institutions implement to modify and shape the behaviour and attitudes of their subjects. Governmentality, as Collier (2009Collier, Stephen 2009 “Topologies of Power: Foucault’s Analysis of Political Government Beyond ‘Governmentality’.” Theory, Culture & Society 26 (6): 78–108. , 99) discusses, can appear in various ways which can inform “conditions of possibilities”, ways of thinking and acting. Tightly tied to disciplinary power, governmentality techniques circulate within the society and across its members to produce and intensify knowledge, shape the conditions of possibility, and form ways of thinking. Collier (2009Collier, Stephen 2009 “Topologies of Power: Foucault’s Analysis of Political Government Beyond ‘Governmentality’.” Theory, Culture & Society 26 (6): 78–108. , 89), drawing on Foucault, discusses the principle of “topology of power”, through which several heterogenous elements, “techniques, institutional arrangements, material forms, and other technologies of power”, are combined in response to new situations and problems. This means that principles of power through governmentality can take new forms and be exercised in new situations.

Our participants’ consumption of materials is associated with the principles of hierarchical structures in three ways: first, as related to institutional arrangements, Iranian students are meant to follow their teachers and not question them. Teachers are always regarded as sources of knowledge and pass their knowledge onto students. Ball (2013Ball, Stephen J. 2013 Foucault, Power and Education. New York: Routledge. , 142) believes that education systems act like a “normalising and excluding machine”. In schools, students’ behaviour, performance, and subjectivities are shaped due to conditions of possibilities and disciplinary power, which want them to act in certain ways. Students learn how to behave, practice certain activities and avoid others. These behaviours include both disciplinary practices and dealing with learning materials. Our participants who lived the majority of their lives in Iran have been formed in this way. This is related to the second point: material forms, as students in association with disciplinary power and practices are exposed to certain materials (i.e., pre-designed textbooks). Iran follows a centralised curriculum meaning that the content and textbooks are designed by the Department of Education and used in the whole country. Such imposed curriculum contributes to governmentality as it reinforces power relations through dispersing certain knowledge (e.g., politico-religious ideologies, unsourced evidentiality) and avoiding others (e.g., promoting critical thinking). Teachers and students should implement the same materials in their classes. Third, techniques of power are imposed on Iranian students as they have to memorise the content of the centralised curriculum. As mentioned above, the desired learning behaviour in school subjects (e.g., Persian literature) is memorisation prescribed by educators, where students are exposed to instances of unsourced evidentials.

An effect related to governing students which can account for taking instances of unsourced evidentials for granted is “exomologesis” (Foucault 1994aFoucault, Michel 1994a “On the Government of Living.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 81–86. New York: The new Press., 81). The workings of exomologesis in a given discourse amount to governing the subjects based on what they should accept as truth and repeat to affirm it. This is done for authenticating certain objects of discourse for themselves and others. “Exomologesis is an emphatic affirmation whose emphasis relates above all to the fact that the subject binds himself to that affirmation” (Foucault 1994aFoucault, Michel 1994a “On the Government of Living.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 81–86. New York: The new Press., 82). On the one hand, memorisation of verses or verbatim repetition of literary works, as well as ideological content about the IRI, which are related to governmentality, promote (new) materials and conditions of possibility. The textbooks students read in Iranian schools contain instances of unsourced evidentiality and, as a desired action, students are required to accept whatever appears in textbooks as true and reproduce them through memorisation, which subsequently reinforces the power-knowledge axis. Accordingly, the way they are governed in schools furthers the consumption of unsourced evidentials. On the other hand, affirmation to literary figures can be related to exomologesis since in Iran this is seen as pride, and pride shows a great bondage to the community. As literary figures such as Sa’di are respected and regarded as national figures, people affirm and support their ideas (Shokouhi and Zaini 2022Shokouhi, Hossein, and Amin Zaini 2022 “Cultural and Politico-Religious Challenges Impacting Critical Reading of Text for Iranian Postgraduates in Australia.” Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 45 (1): 76–97. ). This seems to contribute to the overall understanding that students should accept unsourced evidentials in texts; hence, they become habituated.

A second possibility can be related to the narratives in compulsory religious education that students receive through their school subjects. These religious subjects are associated with and advocate narrative stories in Shiism. Drawing on Amanat (2012)Amanat, Abbas 2012 “Introduction: Iranian Identity Boundaries: A Historical Overview.” In Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective, ed. by Abbas Amanat, and Farzin Vejdani, 1–33. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. , in the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) religious narratives became very popular and this was done with the purpose of building a state which has claimed the political power based on Shiism. To build a Shiite identity, narratives around religion and specifically Shiism were created. It is natural that story creation can involve instances of unsourced evidentials. The current richness of unsourced evidentials in the Persian language can be associated with the historization of language. Hanks (2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. , 181) believes that historization happens when language is layered with contexts over contexts: “At any point in its history, a language is the sedimented product of myriad acts in relation to the value horizons of speakers, addresses, and other receivers”. The history of any given language is a sequence of concretisations: meaning categories are embedded in language in association with the social world. Accordingly, we can suggest that the prevalence of unsourced evidentials has roots in the historization of language as they are linked with categories of meaning and have social functions for language users, as discussed at the level of production.

However, participants’ consumption of unsourced evidentials is further associated with Hanks’ conceptualisation of social and cognition use of referents in everyday discourses. Hanks (2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. , 181) discusses that the “referential function” of language helps language users distinguish different objects they refer to or describe. The referential function has social aspects based on which language users socially and culturally learn what referent to single out when they communicate with others and what referent to ignore. As speakers have used such terms or referential practices continually, they are “habituated to certain ways of occupying context” (Hanks 2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. , 183). Due to the constant use of these features, language users share knowledge which forms the “habitual responses to situations” (Hanks 2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. , 67) and realise that communicative practices “sediment routine ways of perceiving and acting” (Hanks 2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. , 176). Habitual referents dominantly (not strictly or ubiquitously) inform and ameliorate how we routinely think, act or perceive ideas. As related to the participants of this study, they criticised texts for sexism, racism, and politics (Examples [3], [5], and [6]). The sedimentation of politics, dictatorship, and sexism are very common among Iranians (Boroumand 2020Boroumand, Ladan 2020 “Iranians Turn Away from the Islamic Republic.” Journal of Democracy 31 (1): 169–181. ) and signify how participants perceive these ideas in texts and routinely react to them while ignoring the use of unsourced evidentials.

The final possibility concerns the prevalence of unsourced information in daily conversations (Pirzadeh 2016Pirzadeh, Ali 2016 Iran Revisited: Exploring the Historical Roots of Culture, Economics, and Society. Cham: Springer. ), or the speech of politicians as related to power relations and listening or reading genres (Hanks 2018Hanks, William F. 2018 Language and Communicative Practices. New York: Routledge. ). The abundance of unsourced evidentials in daily conversations, media, and politicians’ speech can lead text consumers to accept them unquestionably. While previously we addressed the role of normalisation, this effect can also be investigated through “will to knowledge” (Foucault 1994bFoucault, Michel 1994b “The Will to Knowledge.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 11–16. New York: The New Press., 11), which is a binary system of selection. Foucault (1994b)Foucault, Michel 1994b “The Will to Knowledge.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. by Paul Rabinow, 11–16. New York: The New Press. argues that discourses form a system of inclusion and exclusion, which specifies what objects, truth(s), concepts, etc. appear or not in a certain field. This system of selection works as a binary system of selection in that whatever appears in a given discourse is an effect of truth. This means that “will to knowledge” falsifies between true and untrue so that the appeared knowledge is regarded as acceptable and true. For example, Rouhani used an unsourced evidential to make people believe that Iran had a better performance in terms of supplying groceries in comparison with other countries during the Covid-19 crisis. He did so by never mentioning the name of another country, but comparing it with Iran and suggesting that Iran’s supply of food was more efficient. Once individuals are exposed to objects of discourse (i.e., unsourced evidentials), they might gradually accept them as true which can be a reason why our participants did not raise objections to their use in texts. This can also be further linked with pragmatic and ethnographic prospects.

Hanks (2012)Hanks, William F. 2012 “Evidentiality in Social Interaction.” Pragmatics and Society 3 (2): 169–180. maintains that evidentials are sources of knowledge, statements, and expressive/interactional forces that appear in different genres and play functional roles in conversational contexts. Marsilli-Vargas (2014Marsilli-Vargas, Xochitl 2014 “Listening Genres: The Emergence of Relevance Structures through the Reception of Sound.” Journal of Pragmatics 69: 42–51. , 44) considers genres as related to “kinds of discourse” and believes that genres, which are historically formed and are associated with power relations, through forming contexts and “framework of relevance shape listeners’ orientations”. As listeners are submerged in the “habitus of a particular genre” (Marsilli-Vargas 2014Marsilli-Vargas, Xochitl 2014 “Listening Genres: The Emergence of Relevance Structures through the Reception of Sound.” Journal of Pragmatics 69: 42–51. , 49), they listen to different genres with various purposes which are pragmatically significant: on the one hand, different listeners as social actors listen differently to a same genre and interpret messages differently. On the other hand, listeners who belong to a certain genre (e.g., psychoanalysis in Argentina) not only will have similar interpretations of the same genre but are also expected to follow the norms of that genre (e.g., analyse the vocabulary). This is associated with our participants’ attention to text messages and their disregard for unsourced evidentials. While unsourced evidentials emerged in examples above, our participants’ habitus of political and national genres (e.g., Examples [5], [6], and [9]) directed their attention to messages concerning immorality, corruption, and surveillance in the IRI or Ferdowsi’s reverence as a national figure (e.g., Examples [1] and [2]). Drawing on Marsilli-Vargas, such habitus shaping their orientations led them to focus on certain aspects of texts (e.g., surveillance) and avoid others (unsourced evidentials).