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Ann Kosenko
Yuri Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University
Epistemic modality as a strategy in interaction
The objective of this research is to
elucidate epistemic modality as a strategy of interaction.
Epistemic
modality derives its name from Greek epistéme “knowledge” and is therefore to be interpreted
basically, according to Palmer [1; 18], as “showing the
status of the speaker’s understanding or knowledge; this clearly includes both
his own judgments and the kind of warrant he has for what he says”.
Epistemic
modality refers to the modal expressions that convey the speaker’s commitment
to the truth of the preposition expressed by him/her [2; 4]. This
may refer to how certain the speaker feels about the content of his/her utterance or how likely he/she thinks it is, but also in some cases to the
process of inference made by the speaker. In spoken interaction linguistic
categories expressing epistemic modality include modal auxiliaries, modal
adverbs, modal lexical verbs, parenthetical
clauses and, to lesser extend, modal adjectives and nouns. When it comes to
semantic accounts of linguistic items that serve to express modality in
English, it has been surprisingly common to concentrate on modality only as it
is signaled by the English modal verbs or modals. This is understandable in
view of the fact that because the modals are more integrated within the
structure of the clause than other modal expressions,
they are considered to be more central in the system [2; 4].
It
is possible to distinguish three types of strategic functions that epistemic
modality may have in spoken interaction: a politeness strategy, a face-saving
strategy and a persuasion and manipulation strategy.
In recent pragmatic research, several
scholars have offered frameworks of politeness to account for violation of
cooperative principles and for indirection in language (Leech 1983, Brown and
Levinson 1978, Scollon and Scollon 1983, Lakoff 1975, Tannen 1984, Amt and
Janney 1985 and Östman 1986). What is common to these
is that they deal with modification, that is
strengthening or weakening of the illocutionary force of utterances. The role
of epistemic modality as a politeness strategy is already fairly well
established by such scientists as Holmes (1982), Goates (1983), Hübler
(1983), Markannen (1985) and Westney (1986).
By face-saving, more narrowly than Brown
and Levinson, some scientist refer solely to the concern that the speaker feels
for himself/herself and the extend to which he/she is preoccupied with and
wants to pursue his/her own interests in conversation, rather than acting in a
more hearer-supporting way. Another way in naming this function might be to
call it something like a leeway strategy. It largely involves ambiguating
utterances, so that it becomes very difficult to work out what their
illocutionary forces are. Speakers choose to be evasive and to beat about the
bush in order to leave themselves an “out”. They may want to go off record or
resort to hints of various types, so that illocutionary status of the utterance
remains vague and indeterminate. According to Brown and Levinson, it is not
possible to attribute only one clear communicative intention to the act, but
the speaker provides himself with a number of defensible interpretations. Thus, the
speaker leaves it up to the addressee how to interpret the message, and the
addressee must make some utterance to be able to do this. In a lot of cases the
link between the literal force and the illocutionary force of an utterance that
contains a number of modal items can be almost impossible to retrieve. At the
same time there may be cases where off-record strategies are used in contexts
where they are unambiguously on record, that is the
context contains so many clues that only one interpretation is in fact viable
(Brown and Levinson 1978, Leech 1983). Thus, it is the context that determines
whether we are dealing with on-the-record or off-the-record language.
The persuasion and manipulation strategy is
the use of epistemic modality to manipulate one’s addressee in order to achieve
one’s own conversational goals. This type of use, already quite off-the-record,
relates directly to the rhetorical as opposed to the illocutionary force of an
utterance. It cuts across the Textual Rhetoric and the Interpersonal Rhetoric
of Leech: to some extend the rhetorical devices of written language, such as
the maxims of End-weight and End-focus, or different ways of giving prominence
to the item, can be used in spoken language too. In addition, irony is a
powerful device used in the service of this strategy.
Bibliography:
1.
Wymann, Adrian
Thomas. The expression of modality in Korean. http://www.wymann.info/ Korean/atw_diss. pdf;
2.
Elise
Karkkainen. Modality as a strategy in interaction:
epistemic modality in the language of native and non-native speakers of
English.
3.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. Universals
in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena. In: Goody, E. (ed.), Questions and Politeness.
4.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of
Pragmatics.