A study of epistemic modality in academic and popularised discourse: the case of possibility adverbs perhaps, maybe and possibly

This paper describes the use of perhaps, maybe and possibly in a cross-disciplinary corpus of academic and popularised scientific writing. It accounts for their higher frequency in popularised discourse by investigating their functions in detail. The analysis, conducted from various perspectives (sy...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pic, Elsa, Furmaniak, Grégory
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:España
Repositorio:accedaCRIS portal de investigación de la Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria
OAI Identifier:oai:accedacris.ulpgc.es:10553/11196
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10553/11196
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:570107 Lengua y literatura
550510 Filología
Descripción
Sumario:This paper describes the use of perhaps, maybe and possibly in a cross-disciplinary corpus of academic and popularised scientific writing. It accounts for their higher frequency in popularised discourse by investigating their functions in detail. The analysis, conducted from various perspectives (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical), suggests that two factors are at work: the evidential basis for the epistemic assessment and the mode of discourse the marker is most closely associated with.