An Analysis of Certainly and Generally in Late-Modern English English History Texts

• Authors: Francisco J. Álvarez-Gil
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper analyses the adverbs certainly and generally as stancetaking markers. These adverbial devices are said to show authorial stance and to communicate the author’s commitment or detachment towards the information presented, and so they are classified as epistemic adverbs (Alonso-Almeida 2015). For this study, I have selected a corpus of history texts from the Modern English period (1700-1900), as compiled in The Corpus of History English Texts (Crespo and Moskowich 2015), on the basis of which the two evidential adverbs are examined using computer corpus tools, although manual inspection is also employed to assess the meaning of the items in context. The findings suggest that, in this type of scientific articles, the two adverbs are used with differing pragmatic functions, in the case of certainly it functions mostly as a booster and, in the specific case of generally, its use seems to primarily suggest a hedging purpose (Hyland 2005a).

Keywords

EN

evidentiality; epistemic modality; stance; adverb; corpus linguistics

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 179-195

Dates

published

2019-06-30

Contributors

author

Francisco J. Álvarez-Gil

• Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

References

• Aijmer, Karin. 2015. Analysing discourse markers in spoken corpora: actually as a case study. In Paul Baker and Tony McEnery (eds.), Corpora and Discourse Studies Integrating Discourse and Corpora, 88-109. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Alonso-Almeida, Francisco. 2015. Introduction to stance language. Research in Corpus Linguistics, 3. 1-5. Available at: http://www.aelinco.es/ojs/index.php/ricl
• Álvarez-Gil, Francisco J. 2017. Apparently, fairly and possibly in The Corpus of Modern English History Texts (1700-1900). In Francisco Alonso-Almeida (ed.), Stancetaking in Late Modern English Scientific Writing. Evidence from the Coruña Corpus. Collección Scientia [Applied Linguistics]. Valencia: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.
• Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan. 1988. Adverbial stance types in English. Discourse Processes 11 (1). 1-34.
• Carter, Ronald and Michael McCarthy. 2006. The Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Chafe, Wallace. 1986. Evidentiality in English conversation and academic writing. In Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols (eds.), Evidentiality and the Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, 261-272. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
• Conrad, Susan and Douglas Biber. 1999. Adverbial stance marking in speech and writing. In Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse, 56-73. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Cornillie, Bert. 2009. Evidentiality and epistemic modality. On the close relationship between two different categories. Functions of Language 16 (1). 44-62.
• Crespo, Begoña and Isabel Moskowich. 2015. A Corpus of History Texts (CHET) as part of the Coruña Corpus Project. In Proceedings of the international scientific conference. St. Petersburgh State University, 14-23.
• Cutting, Joan. 2007. Vague language explored. New York: Palgrave.
• Degand, Liesbeth. 2014. ‘So very fast very fast then’ Discourse markers at left and right periphery in spoken French. In Kate Beeching and Ulrich Detges (eds.), Discourse functions at the left and right periphery: Crosslinguistic investigations of language use and language change, 151-178. Brill: Leiden.
• Du Bois, John W. 2007. The Stance Triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, 139-182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Eisenberg, Peter. 2013. Grundriss der deutschen Grammatik. Der Satz. 4th edn. Stuttgart: Metzler.
• Gray, Bethany, Douglas, Biber and Turo Hiltunen. 2011. The expression of stance (1665-1712) in early publications of the Philosophical Transactions and other contemporary medical prose: Innovations in a pioneering discourse. In Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Medical writing in Early Modern English, 221-247. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Haselow, Alexander. 2015. Left vs. right periphery in grammaticalization The case of anyway. In Andrew D.M. Smith, Graeme, Trousdale, and Richard Waltereit (eds.), New Directions in Grammaticalization Research, 158-186. Amsterdam/ New York: John Benjamins.
• Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. Word classes/parts of speech. In Neil Smelser and Paul Baltes (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 16538-16545. Oxford: Pergamon.
• Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hyland, Ken and Polly Tse. 2004. Metadiscourse in academic writing: a reappraisal. Applied Linguistics, 25 (2). 156-177. doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.2.156
• Hyland, Ken. 2000. Hedges, boosters and lexical invisibility: Noticing modifiers in academic texts. Language Awareness, 9 (4). 179-197. doi.org/10.1080/09658410008667145
• Hyland, Ken. 2005a. Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7 (2). 173-192. doi: 10.1177/1461445605050365
• Hyland, Ken. 2005b. Metadiscourse. London/New York: Continuum.
• Kranich, Svenja. 2009. Epistemic modality in English popular scientific texts and their German translations. Trans-kom, 2 (1). 26-41. https://d-nb.info/999839527/34
• Leaper, Campbell and Rachael Robnett. 2011. Women are more likely than men to use tentative language, aren’t they? a meta-analysis testing for gender differences and moderators. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35 (1). 129-142. doi.org/10.1177%2F0361684310392728
• Mondorf, Britta. 2002. Gender Differences in English Syntax. Journal of English Linguistics, 30 (2). 158–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/007242030002005
• Moskowich, Isabel. 2016. Lexical richness in modern women writers: Evidence from the Corpus of History English Texts. Revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 72. 111-128.
• Moskowich, Isabel. 2017. Genre and change in the Corpus of History English Texts. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 16 (3). 84-106.
• Palmer, Frank R. 1986. Mood and modality (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.). Elements of Grammar, 281-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie and Karin Aijmer. 2007. The semantic field of modal certainty. A corpus-based study of English adverbs. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta. 1997. Corpus of early English medical writing 1375-1550. ICAME Journal, 21. 71-78.
• Taavitsainen, Irma. 2011. Medical case reports and scientific thought-styles. Revista de lenguas para fines específicos, 17. 75-98.
• Thomas, Sarah and Thomas P. Hawes. 1994. Reporting verbs in medical journal articles. English for Specific Purposes, 2. 134-155.
• Van der Auwera, Johan. 1998. Introduction. In Johan van der Auwera (Ed.) Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1-24.
• Willet, Thomas. 1988. A cross-linguistic survey of the grammaticalization of evidentiality. Studies in Language, 12. 51-97.

Identifiers

DOI

10.18778/1731-7533.17.2.05