According to the results of our previous studies on written texts and spoken dialogues (Zuczkowski et al. 2014; Zuczkowski et al. 2017) it is possible to identify three main epistemic positions, each having two sides, one evidential (source of information), the other epistemic (commitment towards the truth of the propositional content): Knowing/certain, Not Knowing Whether-Believing/uncertain, Unknowing/neither certain nor uncertain. During a dialogue, speakers can assume one of three different epistemic positions, shifting from one to another in their turns or even within the same turn, and give their interlocutors a complementary one; interlocutors, on their part, can react by showing alignment or misalignment towards the others’ positioning. In this study, in order to illustrate our theoretical perspective, we present four conversational excerpts taken from different types of Italian corpora showing the relations between the epistemic positioning and the sequential structure of interactions. Our analysis suggests that, when interlocutors assume epistemic roles consistent with speakers’ expectations, the conversational outcomes are agreement and alignment; when this is not the case, disagreement and misalignment are frequent. These dynamics affect the sequential structure of the interaction as well.

This paper reports on the results of a sociopragmatic study of restaurant-owners’ public responses to negative customer reviews posted on TripAdvisor. Responses to customer complaints are typically apologetic, taking a deferential stance towards the customer. This study focuses on responses which shift away from this default position and take an explicitly oppositional stance. Drawing on Goffman’s concept of footing and informed by sociopragmatic theories of facework and relational work, I explore the discursive mechanisms and linguistic resources by which restaurant-owners manipulate the footings which underlie their responses to complaints – with a particular focus on radical reframings of the participants’ status and roles (the customer may be publicly denigrated or mocked). Such practices reflect the dynamic, fluid nature of a genre that may at first sight appear to be highly conventional in nature.

The paper describes the process of validating a reliable annotation scheme for the categories of Stance and Engagement in English and Spanish using a bilingual sample of English-Spanish journalistic texts extracted from the MULTINOT corpus (Lavid et al. 2015). The bilingual sample includes three different newspaper genres: news reports, editorials and letters to the editor. Following the generic annotation pipeline proposed by Hovy and Lavid (2010), the paper describes the different steps to validate an annotation scheme to capture the main features of Stance and Engagement and their realizations in English and Spanish. This includes the instantiation of the theoretical categories, the development of annotation guidelines and the performance of an inter-annotation agreement study on a small training corpus to measure the reliability of the proposed tags. The paper also describes the results of the annotation of a larger corpus using the validated scheme (Moratón 2015). This reveals interesting patterns of variation in the distribution of Stance and Engagement in the three newspaper genres, which can be fruitfully used for contrastive linguistic and computational purposes.

The aim of this paper is to identify and systematize the functions of clearly in academic discourse. The adverb shows a continuum of manner and modal meanings, and signals the existence of reliable evidence for claims, which makes it a useful rhetorical device in research articles. The study is based on a corpus of 80 research articles (ca. 580,000 words) representing three disciplines and three branches of science: linguistics (the humanities), sociology (social sciences) and physics (natural sciences). It shows that clearly is used to involve the reader in the process of data analysis (both manner and modal uses), to summarize the findings, make conclusions (modal uses), and to appeal to shared knowledge (discourse marker). Appeals to shared knowledge are only attested in the subcorpora of linguistics and sociology, which tend to adopt a more interactional style of writing than the natural sciences, while the other functions are found in the research articles of all three disciplines. Using White’s (2003) notion of heteroglossic (dis)engagement, clearly can be said to have dialogically contractive functions. Its presence in the text indicates the author’s wish to encourage the reader to adopt his/her perspective.

This article presents the results of a corpus-assisted discourse study into the use of the diminutive marker little in an adversarial trial. It explores the recurrent patterns and the evaluative meanings associated with the use of little, and furthermore looks at the broader interactional context in which these patterns and meanings are found. Drawing on the concepts of stance (du Bois 2007), evaluation (Hunston 1994) and semantic prosody (Louw 1993), it demonstrates how interactants in the courtroom setting lay claim to epistemic priority by stressing the relevance of their own testimony while discrediting the opponent and diminishing the importance of unwanted evidence. The analysis also shows that patterns with little are linked to politeness and mitigation, and that they soften the austerity of communication. The data seem to suggest as well that the evaluative uses of little are more common in references to the primary reality of the courtroom than in references to the out-of-the-courtroom reality, in the case of which denotative meanings prevail. Most importantly, however, the study reveals that despite the formality of courtroom interaction, analytic diminutives with little are a frequent interactional device and, further, that their polarities depend on interplay with other discourse elements as well as the interpersonal goals that the speakers are trying to achieve.

This article presents the results of a corpus-assisted discourse study into the use of the diminutive marker little in an adversarial trial. It explores the recurrent patterns and the evaluative meanings associated with the use of little, and furthermore looks at the broader interactional context in which these patterns and meanings are found. Drawing on the concepts of stance (du Bois 2007), evaluation (Hunston 1994) and semantic prosody (Louw 1993), it demonstrates how interactants in the courtroom setting lay claim to epistemic priority by stressing the relevance of their own testimony while discrediting the opponent and diminishing the importance of unwanted evidence. The analysis also shows that patterns with little are linked to politeness and mitigation, and that they soften the austerity of communication. The data seem to suggest as well that the evaluative uses of little are more common in references to the primary reality of the courtroom than in references to the out-of-the-courtroom reality, in the case of which denotative meanings prevail. Most importantly, however, the study reveals that despite the formality of courtroom interaction, analytic diminutives with little are a frequent interactional device and, further, that their polarities depend on interplay with other discourse elements as well as the interpersonal goals that the speakers are trying to achieve.

The article discusses the premises of the systemic typology of G. P. Mel’nikov in comparison with the precepts of the sociolinguistic typology of P. Trudgill. The author, in particular, looks into the correlation of linguistic patterning and societal structures as presented in the two theories, and offers a detailed synopsis of the societal factors and their valuables (external determinants) used in the respective disciplines. Detailed discussion of the societal factors as presented in the systemic and social typologies is offered. Major differences between their classifications in Mel’nikov and Trudgill are substantiated. Finally, based on the postulates of Mel’nikov’s typology, the paper dwells on the concept of internal determinant or, the communicative scope which optimizes all the levels of language system, while co-varying types of social structures with types of linguistic patterning.