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Evidentiality in discourse

Article  in  Intercultural Pragmatics · September 2014

DOI: 10.1515/ip-2014-0015

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  Intercultural Pragmatics 2014; 11(3): 321 – 332

Anita Fetzer* and Etsuko Oishi

Evidentiality in discourse
DOI 10.1515/ip-2014-0015

1 Introduction
The investigation of the theoretical concept of evidentiality has originated from
the analysis of languages like Kwakiutl (Boas [1911] 2002), where evidentiality is
coded in the system of grammar. In recent years, however, the focus has shifted
more and more to its pragmatic functions: by marking the source of information
and thus the commitment of, or attitude toward, the information, the speaker
(or writer) secures a communicative act to the hearer (or reader), or promotes or
shares the understanding of a state of affairs. In these pragmatic functions,
­evidentiality may intersect with epistemic modality and with the marking of
tense  and aspect. The present issue of Evidentiality in discourse provides func-
tional analyses of the form and function of evidentiality as grammaticalized and
optional marking across different discourse domains (political discourse, media
discourse and non-institutional conversation) and different discourse genres
­(research articles, media reports, Prime Minister’s Questions, election campaigns
and mundane everyday talk). The following section examines the theory and
practice of evidentiality, discussing the grammar and pragmatics of evidentiality.
The third section examines evidentiality as a discursive construct and the fourth
section introduces the contributions.

2 Evidentiality: theory and practice

The theoretical concept of evidentiality has been described as the coding of the
source of information. Research on evidentiality differentiates between lan­guages
in which evidentiality is a grammatical category whose coding is obligatory, and
languages in which evidentiality “is defined as the functional category that refers

*Corresponding author: Anita Fetzer: University of Augsburg, Germany.

E-mail: anita.fetzer@phil.uni-augsburg.de
Etsuko Oishi: Tokyo University of Science. E-mail: oishi@rs.tus.ac.jp

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322    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

to the perceptual and/or epistemological basis for making a speech act” (Cornillie
2009: 45). From a typological perspective, languages can be classified into a
group of evidentiality1(E1)-languages and a group of evidentiality2(E2)-languages.
In the former set, which contains primarily non Indo-European languages (cf.
Diewald and Smirnova 2010: 80), the overt coding of evidentiality is obligatory
and it is generally administered by a closed set of morpho-syntactic markers (cf.
e.g., Aikenvald 2004; Boas [1911] 2002; Faller 2002). In the latter set, the overt
coding of evidentiality is optional; there is no closed set of evidential markers
but rather an open set of linguistic devices which may code evidentiality, such
as  lexical verbs, lexical nouns, modal auxiliaries or modal adverbs, and an
open set of non-verbal means, such as particular facial expressions or air quotes.
Sometimes one and the same linguistic form may code epistemic modality and/or
evidentiality. Against this background, Cornillie argues that “the functional do-
main of evidentiality is present in most languages, and hence may be considered
a language universal” (Cornillie 2009: 45).
The source of knowledge is generally differentiated with respect to coding a
direct source or an indirect (or mediated) source. From a communication-based
perspective, coding the source of knowledge seems to be functionally equivalent
to providing evidence for the validity of a conversational contribution as a whole
or for some of its constitutive parts. For indirect or mediated sources, particularly
for memory-based sources, the coding and expression of evidentiality may inter-
sect with the coding and expression of epistemicity. While it is highly important
to distinguish between the categories of epistemicity and evidentiality from the
analyst’s perspective, it is almost impossible to tease them apart from the partic-
ipant’s perspective in communication, where a speaker’s reference to evidential-
ity seems to be connected intrinsically with her/his evaluation of the epistemic
status of the propositions in which the information is packaged.

2.1 The grammar of evidentiality and its coding

in E1-languages

In grammar-based approaches to evidentiality, evidentiality is assigned the

­status of a grammatical category whose coding is obligatory, as is the case in
Cherokee or Tariana (cf. e.g., Aikenvald 2004; Faller 2002). The obligatory coding
of the source of information can be done synthetically and/or analytically through
the use of inflectional morphemes and particles, or through the use of a particular
tense or aspect, and it generally particularizes the source as visual, auditory,
­audiovisual, sensory or reported and inferred information. Aikhenvald (2004:
63–64) differentiates between linguistic evidentials, which are obligatory ­devices,

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 Evidentiality in discourse    323

and other means to express evidentiality, such as lexical devices. Both feed on
different types of evidentiality in an evidential system with the following choices:
visual, non-visual sensory, inference, assumption, hearsay and quotative. Infer-
ence is based on visible, tangible evidence or result, and is for this reason always
non-first-hand. Assumption is based on evidence other than visible results, which
may include logical reasoning or simply general knowledge. Hearsay refers to
­reported information with no reference to the source it was reported by, and
­quotative refers to reported information with an overt reference to the quoted
source. Aikhenvald points out that “[r]eported speech can be viewed as a univer-
sal evidentiality strategy” (2004: 371). Inherent in her system is the parameter
of  speaker-anchored evidence, and the implicit contrast with other-anchored
­evidence (cf. also Cornillie 2009). Accordingly, interlocutors code the infor­
mation  source and differentiate with respect to firsthand and non-firsthand
knowledge.
Extending the frame of investigation to discourse, Aikhenvald (2004: 381)
spells out the pragmatic implications of evidentials as follows:

Evidentials are a powerful and versatile avenue for human communication. They provide
grammatical backing for the efficient realization of the various maxims of conversational
implicature within Grice’s ‘cooperative principle’ (. . .). Following the Maxim of Quantity,
they allow speakers to make their contribution ‘as informative as required’. In agreement
with the Maxim of Manner, they help avoid both ‘obscurity of expression’ and ‘ambiguity’.
This is why lay people and even linguists often wish that familiar Indo-European languages
could require as much precision of speech as is obligatory in languages with evidentials.
The importance of evidentials for successful communication is what underlies their rele-
vance for human cognition.

The explicit connection between morpho-syntax and the Gricean CP and its
­maxims is highly relevant to the analysis of the expression of evidentiality in
E2-languages and to the differentiation between the expression of evidentiality
and epistemicity, as is discussed in the following two sub-sections.

2.2 The pragmatics of evidentiality and its expression

in E2-languages

In E2-languages, evidentiality is not coded in a closed set of evidential markers,

which generally stem from the domain of morpho-syntactic inflection, but rather
is expressed by an open set of functional devices, using various lexical and non-
verbal linguistic means, such as metacommunicative comments, expressions of
modality, or particularized configurations of information structure. The optional

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324    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

coding of the source of information tends to be done with an open set of linguis-
tic and non-linguistic devices, which comprise explicit references to a particular
source of information, or implicitly represented references, generating conversa-
tional implicatures indexing the source, as is the case with quotatives or the
­strategic use of verbs of belief indicating hearsay information or inferred infor­
mation, for instance.
Evidentiality in E2-languages as the optional coding of the source of informa-
tion is pertinent to the speech act. By explicitly or implicitly referring to the source
of information, the speaker implies a particular assertive-type act or its felicity
conditions, or boosts or mitigates the act (cf. Sbisà and Oishi in the present issue).
In doing so, the speaker commits herself to the truth of the statement to a certain
degree, while exhibiting her attitude about the epistemic status of the infor­
mation and/or about the reliability of the source (cf. Chafe and Nichols 1986;
­Dendale and Tasmowski 2001; Diewald and Smirnova 2010).
Evidential markers are treated as a semantic class in and through which the
source of information is particularized. Quotatives, which can be both verbal
(e.g., ‘like’, ‘say’ or the full introductory formula in the context of reported speech)
and non-verbal (e.g., air quotes, particularized facial expressions or tones of
voice), have been classified as grammaticalized evidentials. Other references to
evidentiality are the cognitive-verb-based parenthetical I believe (van Bogaert
2006), the highly contextualized epistemic must, which can be contrasted with
the context-free interpretation of an inflectional affix, but which – unlike the af-
fix – carries a strong implication of the degree of speaker commitment (cf. Mushin
2001: 31), and further “more grammaticalized expressions such as evidential
­auxiliaries”, such as “English seem” (Cornillie 2009: 46; Aijmer 2009).
Due to the inherent complexity of the theoretical construct of evidentiality,
which can be represented by a grammatical category on the one hand and a
­functional category on the other, as well as its intersection with epistemicity as
regards the expression of indirect sources of information in the domain of infer-
ence, it has been suggested that evidential meaning may be analysed from a
narrow view and from a wide view (cf. e.g., Mushin 2001: 51). The former focuses
on the specification of the source of information, and the latter accommodates
additionally the speaker’s assessment of their knowledge, which is generally
­administered by the huge field of epistemicity, pointing to a pragmatic analysis
of evidentiality in which the inventory of linguistic forms expressing evidentiality
as well as epistemicity is accounted for.
Aikenvald (2004) argues for a clear-cut disjunction between epistemic mo-
dality and evidentiality. The disjunction-paradigm is easily applicable to lan-
guages with the grammatical category of evidentiality in which the distinction
between them is based on morpho-syntactic criteria. In lan­guages in which evi-

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 Evidentiality in discourse    325

dentiality has the status of a functional category, evidentiality and epistemic

­modality are distinguished as follows: there is either an overlap between the two,
that is evidentiality and epistemicity intersect in the domain of inferences (e.g.
van der Auwera & Plungian 1998), or evidentiality is included in epistemicity
(Givón 1982; Chafe 1986; Ifantidou 2000). Irrespective of the different modes of
delimitation, evidentiality is generally seen as referring to the source of infor­
mation, and epistemic modality is seen as referring to the attitude towards
­information, and the two overlap in the domain of inference, viz. acquiring the
information through reasoning.1 Chafe (1986) argues for evidentiality to be used
as a broad term to cover any linguistic expression of attitude towards informa-
tion, considering also degrees of reliability (as is generally expressed by modal
verbs and modal adverbs), belief (as is generally expressed by cognitive verbs),
induction and deduction (as are generally expressed by modal verbs and modal
adverbs), sensory evidence, hearsay evidence, hedges and expectations. Ander-
son (1986) argues along similar lines, pointing out that evidentials show the kind
of justification for a factual claim, which is available to the person making that
claim. Accordingly, evidentials are normally used in assertions, but not in irrealis
clauses and not in presuppositions, and they are rarely used when the claimed
fact is directly observable to the interlocutors.
Cornillie (2009) discusses the broad interpretation of evidentiality with epis-
temicity containing evidentiality or with the two domains overlapping in their
domains of reference, viz. epistemic necessity and inferential evidentiality, and
contrasts that conceptualization with the exclusive interpretation of evidentiality
as follows: “Evidentiality refers to the reasoning process that lead to a proposi-
tion and epistemic modality evaluates the likelihood that this proposition is true”
(Cornillie 2009: 46–47). Hence, two different types of reasoning are required: evi-
dential reasoning concerning the reliability of knowledge and epistemic reason-
ing concerning speaker commitment:

Reliability should not be lumped together with the evaluation of the likelihood and its
­expression in terms of degrees of epistemic speaker commitment. Whereas reliability is
­included in epistemic modality, the reverse is not true (. . .) A further difference between
reliability and likelihood consists in the fact that the former notion mainly refers to states of
affairs that have happened or, at least, are happening, whereas the latter also refers to the
future. (Cornillie 2009: 59)

1 Simon-Vandenbergen (1996) refers explicitly to the connectedness between cognitive certainty

and knowledgeability, manifest in the following sources of knowledge: rationality, common
sense, factual evidence, hearsay, majority opinion or past experience.

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326    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

3 Evidentiality as a discursive construct

The functional category of evidentiality is also of relevance to discourse connec-
tion and discourse connectors, as pointed out by Verhagen (2005). He distin-
guishes between particulars, which allow for verification, and generalizations,
which do not allow for verification. Moreover, contrastive connectives signify a
contrast between mental spaces, and concessives refer to content and to the do-
main of epistemicity. Moving beyond the grammar- and sentence-based analysis
and thus beyond the speaker-centred perspective, Cornillie differentiates be-
tween source-evidentiality referring to different modes of knowing, e.g. sensorial,
visual, inference, hearsay with the speaker as the source of evidence, or other
evidence as the source. Evidence is further classified as subjective and inter­
subjective: the former refers to a non-shared subjective access to the evidence
(cf. also Aijmer 2009), and the latter to a shared status of evidence with a shared
intersubjective access to the evidence. “Evidential expressions indicate that there
are reasons for the assumption made by the speaker and epistemic expressions
evaluate that assumption” (Cornillie 2009: 57), and he concludes as follows:
­“Finally, focusing on the status of the evidence can also help to differentiate be-
tween evidentiality and epistemic modality: if the evidence for the qualification
can be shifted from the speaker to another source and vice versa, an expression is
evidential” (Cornillie 2009: 58).
While it is highly important to distinguish between the categories of episte-
micity, evidentiality and attitude from the analyst’s perspective, it is almost
­impossible for the participant to attribute them to clear-cut categories in lan­
guages in which evidentiality has the status of a functional category. That is
why  some researchers argue for a conceptualization of these notions under
the umbrella term of (un)certainty as a scalar notion (Bongelli and Zuczkowski
2008). Adapting the cybernetic model of Watzlawick et al. (1967) to the communi-
cation and non-communication of (un)certainty, Bongelli and Zuczkowski (2008)
claim that (1) (un)certainty cannot be not communicated, and (2) (un)certainy is
an intrinsic feature of communication. They conclude that for natural-language
communication truth and falsehood are not of prime relevance because both
true  and false propositions are always communicated with the attitude of
(un)certainty.
In E2-language, evidentiality has been assigned the status of a functional
­category, which may be referred to explicitly in discourse by spelling out the
source of information, for instance. It may also be referred to implicitly in dis-
course by indexing the domains of hearsay or reasoning with modal auxiliaries,
for instance. Against this background, evidentiality is assigned the status of a
presupposition in discourse, which – in line with the Gricean CP, the maxims and

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 Evidentiality in discourse   327

implicature – is brought into the discourse as a pragmatic presupposition, and is

brought out and made explicit as evidence, should the communicative need arise.
Consequently, implicit and explicit references to evidentiality display indexical
properties.
In E2-language, the functional category of evidentiality manifests itself in the
importation of evidence into the on-going discourse. Evidence may be brought
into the discourse explicitly by spelling out which contribution (or which parts of
the contribution) count(s) as evidence, referring explicitly to the metacommuni-
cative term and mentioning it. Directly attested evidence may also be brought into
the discourse through quotations and their sources, and through making explicit
the referential domains of knowledge. Evidence may also be brought into the dis-
course in an implicit or mediated manner, indexing the construct of evidentiality
or some of its sub-categories, by saying, for instance ‘as I’ve heard’, ‘as I’ve just
learned’, or ‘as the encyclopaedia Britannica says’.
In ordinary-language the meaning of evidence is connected closely with fact,
clarity, truth and existence, and ‘evidence’ is generally brought into a discourse
when a conversational contribution, or one or more of its constitutive parts, are
not accepted the way they have been postulated, but rather are followed up by
the addressee or by another communication partner requesting the speaker to
provide further evidence for the validity of her/his contribution. Should the
­producer of the followed-up contribution intend to have the claims which s/he
originally postulated accepted by her/his communication partner(s), s/he needs
to back them by providing further arguments in support of the original claims, by
making explicit some of their presuppositions, which may count as arguments in
that particular context, or by providing more contextual information (cf. Fetzer
2002, 2007). From a sequentiality-based perspective, evidence is brought into the
discourse at a somewhat later stage than the conversational contribution, which
a speaker intends to back up with that evidence. Consequently, the mention of
‘evidence’ may count as a backwards reference to some prior stretch of discourse
which contains some query about the validity of a proposition, and at the same
time it may count as a forward reference to a stretch of discourse which is going
to provide a backing for the queried proposition. This particular constraint con-
cerning the anaphoric and cataphoric referencing potential of metacommunica-
tive ‘evidence’ is manifest across different discourse domains, as is illustrated
below.
The following excerpt stems from the context of spoken political discourse,
adapted from the web-based BNC: “There’s strong evidence that Cornwall fulfils
the requirements of those special geographic considerations.” (BNC JS682, my
emphasis) Here, the mention of evidence, which is modified by the adjective
‘strong’, signifies that the speaker has access to information, which substantiates

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328    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

the claim that Cornwall fulfils the necessary requirements to qualify for a partic-
ular issue. In academic discourse, the mention of evidence occurs in very similar
contexts, indicating that previously stated contributions count as evidence in the
speaker’s argument for the existence of a ‘cause for concern’, whose validity is
boosted by the modal adverb of certainty ‘indeed’: “A review of the l­iterature
­provides evidence that there is, indeed, cause for concern. First and foremost,
craving’s relation to drug use is weak” (ABRT_14, 1992: 160, my emphasis). What
may also be of relevance is the observation that in the academic-­discourse data
at hand, the mention of evidence co-occurs with definite articles or with demon-
stratives, but not with indefinite articles. This is not the case in ordinary dis-
course where ‘evidence’ co-occurs with the indefinite quantifier ‘some’2 and with
the verb of perception see, which is however followed-up in the example at
hand:  “Well we’ve seen some evidence of foxes (. . .) What’s the ­evidence?”
(6 KBH S_conv, my emphasis). The distribution of ‘evidence’ is not very high in
spoken conversation3, where the metacommunicative concept seems to be re-
ferred to more frequently in a more generalized manner, e.g. with generic lexical
expressions or phrases, such as ‘how do you know’, ‘as you know’ or ‘as far as I
know’.
The relatively low frequency of ‘evidence’ in ordinary discourse does not
mean that evidence is not of relevance to ordinary discourse. Rather, the low
­frequency of the explicit mention of evidence is interpreted as follows: the meta-
communicative concept of evidence tends to be pre-empted in ordinary discourse,
and it is not only pre-empted in ordinary discourse, but also in academic dis-
course, and possibly in discourse in general. Hence, evidence is only mentioned
when the validity of a contribution and of one or more of its constitutive claims is
at stake. In dialogic forms of communication, it is generally mentioned by the
addressee(s), and in monologic forms of communication, be they local or global,
viz. in a chain of arguments, it may also be referred to or mentioned by the
­speakers themselves, pre-empting possible objections. In that case, evidence
supporting the argumentative value of the contribution may be imported into the
discourse using more conventionalized means, such as quotations from expert

2 A query for ‘some evidence’ in the BNC (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) returned 4.39 hits per
million in BNC_all, but 13.57 hits per million in BNC_academic. As for ‘any evidence’, there were
2.41 per million in BNC_all, and 5.09 per million in BNC_academic.
3 A query for ‘evidence’ in the BNC (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) returned the highest frequency
of occurrence in spoken courtroom interactions (1,474.83 per million), followed by written
­academic discourse (depending on discipline: between 726.92 and 479.06 per million), spoken
tutorials (453.60 per million) and spoken conversation (13.71 per million).

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 Evidentiality in discourse   329

sources. Evidence with a weaker argumentative value may also be imported into
the discourse by referencing sources with a mediated or indirect status, such as
hearsay or weak inference.

The contributions
All papers in the contribution are based on the premise that evidentiality is
a  pragmatic notion: the speaker/writer encodes her commitment of, or her
­epistemic attitude toward, the information as discursive strategies in a broad
sense. The papers by Anita Fetzer, Elisabeth Reber, Lawrence N. Berlin, and
Montserrat González examine the expression of evidentiality in academic dis-
course, political discourse and mundane everyday discourse. The papers by
­Etsuko Oishi and ­Marina Sbisà, address evidentiality from a speech-act-theoretic
perspective.
Anita Fetzer’s Foregrounding evidentiality in (English) academic discourse:
Patterned co-occurrences of the sensory perception verbs seem and appear exam-
ines the distribution, patterned co-occurrences and function of the sensory per-
ception verbs appear and seem and the three English modal auxiliaries can, may
and must in the context of written academic discourse, concentrating on their
contribution to the expression of evidentiality and epistemic modality. She iden-
tifies salient discourse patterns and emergent discourse patterns, which may
­contribute to the fore- and backgrounding of evidential meaning.
Elisabeth Reber’s Constructing evidence at Prime Minister’s Question Time: An
analysis of the grammar, semantics and pragmatics of the verb see argues that
the presentation of evidence constitutes a common practice in the argumentative
discourse at Prime Minister’s Question Time. It provides an in-depth analysis of
the evidential function of see in the context of evidential moves at PMQT in the
British House of Commons, showing that the evidential function of the verb is
achieved through its context-specific semantics, grammatical formatting and sit-
uated embeddedness, and that the reference to the perceptual basis of a claim
evoked by the verb see may co-occur with epistemic qualification and evaluative
expressions.
Lawrence N. Berlin and Alejandra Prieto-Mendoza’s Evidential embellishment
in political debates during US campaigns examines the strategic use of evidential-
ity in discrediting an opponent during the US political mid-term campaigns of
2010 and the degree of commitment for their claims exhibited by the individual
candidates, codifying the most prevalent forms of evidentials waged against
­opponents in US political campaigns. Taking the study a step further, the use of
evidentiality will be juxtaposed against the degree of commitment exercised by

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330    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

the speakers: commitment to a course of action, commitment to an assertion, and

commitment to truth value.
Montserrat González’s paper Evidentiality, intersubjectivity and salience in
Spanish and Catalan markers claro/clar and la verdad/veritat examines eviden-
tial and salient meanings of Spanish and Catalan pragmatic markers claro/clar
and la verdad/veritat, focusing on their intersubjective nature. The link between
subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and the construction of individual and collective
salience is discussed and illustrated through the role of Spanish claro and la
­verdad and Catalan clar and la veritat, two pragmatic markers that hold a
strong  evidential value. The author shows that these markers adopt a twofold
cognitive-functional role depending on the monologic or dialogic nature of the
interactional communicative context, and on the newness or givenness of the
­information being delivered or exchanged with the interlocutor.
Etsuko Oishi’s paper Evidentials in entextualization analyses the discursive
functions of evidentials in the framework of Austinian speech act theory applying
it to a newspaper article. By indicating the information source, the speaker (or the
writer) testifies, reports, conjectures, or does other expositive illocutionary acts
(Austin ([1962] 1975) about a situation/event/thing in the world, while indicating
a strong or weak commitment to the truth of it. As the illocutionary and perlocu-
tionary effect, the hearer (or the reader) is invited to share the interpretation of
the situation/event/thing, and to adopt a certain attitude toward it, such as be-
lieving, accepting, or recognizing it.
Marina Sbisà’s paper on Evidentiality and illocution investigates the relation-
ship that textual strategies concerning evidentiality bear to the type of illocution-
ary act performed by the speaker (or author) in uttering a conversational turn or
discourse stretch. The paper examines markers of speaker’s attitude about the
epistemic status of information as illocutionary indicators in a broad sense, and
attributions of epistemic attitude to one’s interlocutor or other agents as per­
forming illocutionary functions of their own, but at the same time revealing the
attitude of the speaker about the epistemic status of the informational content of
the attributed attitude.

Acknowledgments: We are deeply grateful to the audience of our panel at the

IPrA 2011 in Manchester for valuable input, in particular to our discussant
Karin  Aijmer. We would also like to express our sincere thanks to our contri­
butors,  to our internal and external reviewers and to Istvan Kecskes for their
support and encouragement and their helpful comments on the first version of
the articles.

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 Evidentiality in discourse   331

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 332    Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi

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Bionotes
Anita Fetzer is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Augsburg,
Germany. She is currently engaged in research projects on follow-ups in political
discourse, and the linguistic representation of discourse relations. Her research
interests focus on context, functional grammar, contrastive analysis, and modal-
ity and evidentiality. She has had a series of articles published on rejections, con-
text, and political discourse. Her most recent publications are The pragmatics of
political discourse (2013), Contexts and context: parts meets whole (2011, with Et-
suko Oishi), and Context and appropriateness (2007).

Etsuko Oishi is a Professor of Linguistics at Tokyo University of Science. She

­received her Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh in 1999. Her research interests
focus on Austinian speech act theory, context and contextualization, discourse
analysis, modality and evidentiality, indexicality, implicature, media discourse,
and translation. She has published many articles on context, appropriateness,
apologies, evidentiality and modality, and referring and predicating. She is
the  co-editor (with Anita Fetzer) of Context and contexts: Parts meet whole?
­(Benjamins 2011).

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