Evidentiality in the text of a research work: a cognitive-discursive aspect

The paper presents an analysis of the category of evidentiality (authorization, in Russian) based on the scientific discourse material. Evidentiality is investigated from the standpoint of the cognitive and discursive approach, which allows exploring the principles of text producing in detail. In this approach, evidentiality is presented as a means of speech which marks the author's cognitive-discursive activity in the test. This activity consists in embodying the emerging knowledge structured in accordance with the author's concept, his/her world outlook and based on the epistemic conditions in the test. It is emphasized that the cognitive-discursive approach is a multivariate analysis of linguistic units which can be carried out in several stages. The initial stage consists in determining the role of eviden-tiality in the implementation of the author's intention as viewed through the composition structure of text. Then, the relationship of evidentiality with the category of certainty / uncertainty based on the identification of the language means in the modus and dictum parts of the sentence used to carry out a specific reference is studied, the type of pragmatic sets of evidential statements associated with the formation of evidentiality blocks in the text is determined. These blocks are marked as discrete structural units of the text depicting components of communicative, informative and pragmatic content in the text. Cognitive operations reflected in the text, whose succession is accompanied by an "evidential key" which is a discursive action and a transition to another source of information or from an evidential statement to a non-evidential one (or vice versa), are also studied. The cognitive-discursive analysis also includes the interpretation of subjective speech components expressed in the evidential statements: a meta-level character, syncretic nature, consituation, intentionality and supra-segmental nature components. The final stage of the analysis is describing the stylistic side of evidentials. They are described in terms of their compliance with the relevant standards of the given functional style, the presence of stylistic markedness, i.e. those properties that make evidentiality a differentiating feature of the scientific speech style. The stylistic features of evidentiality on the lexical, grammatical and semantic levels and their ability to reflect the author's stylistic manner of presentation are demonstrated. It is concluded that the combination of textual and discursive approaches to the study of evi-dentiality makes it possible to present a scientific text as a repository of implemented evidential meanings accompanying the cognitive activity of a scientist, and discourse is presented as the process of formation of these meanings.

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