Abstract:
This paper uses a text-driven approach to explore epistemological positioning
(the expression of assessments concerning knowledge) in English newspapers.
The notion of epistemological positioning (EP) often overlaps with
evidentiality—the linguistic marking of the basis of speaker/writer knowledge.
This is a relatively modern concept in linguistics and, compared to the
amount of research it has attracted concerning other languages, it has been
somewhat neglected in research focusing on English. Newspaper texts are a
particularly good source for looking into EP and evidentiality, because the
news story is a genre that is preoccupied with knowledge. The analysis
shows that EP in English can be very complex, and that the distinction between
attribution and averral (Sinclair 1988) needs to be taken into account
when discussing it in naturally occurring texts (particularly in news
texts). The resulting elements of EP that are identified for the English language
o¤er a first glance at the possibilities to express EP in English, and
open up future research on EP in di¤erent registers and text types.
