ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses the expression of evidentiality in Spanish. The conceptual domain of epistemicity comprises the categories of evidentiality (epistemic justification) and epistemic modality (epistemic support). Studies on the pragmatics of evidentiality discuss notions such as reliability and the pragmatic strength of evidential utterances in relation to the evidential hierarchy, as well as issues of speaker commitment. From a discourse-pragmatic perspective, evidentiality relates to speaker’s epistemic stance, strategies of epistemic legitimization, and ‘epistemic control’ in the discourse. This chapter reviews some of these theoretical issues and exemplifies the conceptual domain of evidentiality in Spanish. Recent research addresses issues such as the use of evidential expressions as markers of politeness and attenuation. Discourse-pragmatic studies focus on their use as involvement and commitment in interaction, and as resources to convey speaker stance.
