Epistemic Stance Taking in Chinese Media Discourse

Abstract

This study inspects how Chinese epistemic modality is responsive to the participant stance and communicative intention of the press. Results indicate predominant presence of epistemic adverbs in local news as compared with business and politics news. They are also more favored in reflective comments and quoted statements than factual descriptions. However, occurring preferences vary between epistemic subclasses. Speculative outnumbers assertive across different subject matters. Speculative also features a greater frequency than assertive as journalists narrate, comment and quote. These distributional tendencies suggest a stronger sense of stance marking carried by assertive than speculative. This in turn reflects a heavier responsibility journalists take as delivering knowledge with a higher level of commitment. It is concluded that journalists make a strategic choice of epistemic markers to attain distinct forces of stance taking. The findings substantiate the role of semantic constructs as an account for cognitive pragmatics.