Evidentiality and Socioepistemic Status of Participants. A Case Study of Spanish por lo visto ‘seemingly’ and al parecer ‘apparently’

Abstract

This paper presents an interactional approach to the evidential discourse markers por lo visto ‘seemingly’ and al parecer ‘apparently’. It is shown that these markers show a clear preference for interactional actions which involve exchange of information (tell, ask and reply). Moreover, it is argued that the distribution and the function of the two markers are related to the socioepistemic status of the speaker and the organization of the sequence. Primary knowers usually use evidential markers in second parts of the adjacency pair, with a distancing effect, whereas non-primary knowers use evidential markers in first parts. This way speakers seek a confirmation in the next turn, which has a mitigation effect. Our interactional analysis offers a more contextualized and detailed characterization of evidential discourse markers and allows us to understand the type of activities speakers are engaged in when using these knowledge related linguistic expressions.

Keywords

• conversation analysis
• discourse markers epistemic asymmetry
• evidentiality
• interaction
• socioepistemic status