Epistemic stance taking in Chinese media discourse.
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Date
2009-12-01
Authors
Hsieh, Chia-Ling
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Abstract
This study inspects how Chinese epistemic modality is responsive to the participant
stance and communicative intention of the press. Results indicate predominant presence of
epistemic adverbs in local news as compared with business and politics news. They are also
more favored in reflective comments and quoted statements than factual descriptions. However,
occurring preferences vary between epistemic subclasses. Speculative outnumbers assertive
across different subject matters. Speculative also features a greater frequency than assertive as
journalists narrate, comment and quote. These distributional tendencies suggest a stronger
sense of stance marking carried by assertive than speculative. This in turn reflects a heavier
responsibility journalists take as delivering knowledge with a higher level of commitment. It is
concluded that journalists make a strategic choice of epistemic markers to attain distinct forces
of stance taking. The findings substantiate the role of semantic constructs as an account for
cognitive pragmatics.