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Project

Towards a discourse-functional analysis of the expression of epistemic stance in Court in Cordoba Spanish.

The aim of the collaboration is to explore aspects of the grammar of the Córdoba variety of oral Spanish proceeding on the premise that their realization and effective use in a natural context are conditioned by the development of the interaction and the attainment of specific communicative goals. The data will consist of interactional speech production in an institutional context. The phenomenon that has been identified as the best candidate for the initial focus of empirical analysis is the expression of epistemic assessment. Reasons for the choice include the abundance of indicators of epistemicity in the kind of institutional discourse that will serve as data source and the richness of the implications that such study can offer to the modelling of grammar. Functionalist perspectives conceive of language as a context-sensitive system; specifically, the cognitive-functional approach with its strengths in the treatment of semantic phenomena is apt to throw new light onto the range of manifestations of stance in situated discourse, relating evidentiality, epistemicity and modality, focusing on combinations of expressions in continuous text and highlighting the influence of the communicative needs of speech participants. This novel view of grammar allows for corpus-driven research that can tap into the currently available data-management technology.
Date:1 Oct 2010 →  30 Sep 2012
Keywords:Cordoba Spanish, Epistemic stance
Disciplines:Theory and methodology of literary studies