On Epistemic Stance Markers In Mandarin Conversation From The Perspective Of Interactional Linguistics

Epistemic stance markers(abbreviated as ESM)are used by the speaker to position subjects(self and others)and present his/her commitment on objects.They can be used to mark knowing(or unknowing),certainty(or doubt),and the perspective from which the information is given.Stance-taking as a public social act is a classic topic of Interactional Linguistics on how interaction is conducted with linguistic resources.Interactional Linguistics uses naturally occurring data,conducts context-sensitive analyses in an online perspective,and strives to find out the relevant social-cultural factors contributing to interaction.This study adopts the approach of Interactive Linguistics,to investigate the grammatical classes and syntactic types of ESM,to classify the semantic meanings expressed by ESM,to discuss interactional functions of high-frequency ESM according to its IU position.Last but not least,R software is used to conduct Multiple Regression Analysis on factors of ESM/IU,on the basis of which,the paper discusses personal speech styles shaped by the semantic meanings of different ESM.Chapter 1 is an introduction.I briefly introduce the origin,aim and significance of this study.Notions in Interactional Linguistic and Stance-taking Theory are summarized as frameworks provide the basis for my quantitative and qualitative analyses respectively.The database which is collected by the author consists of 16 conversational segments or excerpts naturally occurring between native speakers of Mandarin Chinese,the total length of the audio and video recordings is 9 hours,transcribed into 162,441 words in CLAN.Chapter 2 is a review.According to whether using naturally-occurring data or not,studies on epistemic stance are summarized into two ways,one is based on semanticfunction,the other is based on interactional functions.Although the present study is the latter,both of the two ways are important to guide us in coding ESM in the database.Mandarin related epistemic stance studies mainly focus on comparative study and case study,highlighting the most common epistemic markers.According to the semantic direction of ESM,studies on mandarin ESM are summarized into three ways,one is based on epistemic status,one is based on the commitment of information,and the last is based on the source of information.Chapter 3 gives an extensive overview of the grammatical classes and syntactic types of ESMs in the database.This is done first of all to conduct a data-driven and down-top way coding ESMs in CLAN,then use command FREQ made a quantitative analysis.It is shown that there are 1,561 ESM in the data,and epistemic phrases are by far the most common group(41.6%),the others from high to low are: epistemic adverbs>modals> verbs> final particles> nouns> adjectives.It is also shown that there is a preference for epistemic stance to be expressed by a relatively limited set of items,and the top ten ESMs are: kěnéng> wǒ juéde> hǎoxiàng> kěndìng> wǒ gǎnjué> ba>g ǎ nju é > j ī b ě nsh à ng> zh ē nde.I pay particular attention to stance-taking and interactional functions of the high frequency ESM.Chapter 4 examines the position of ESM occur in terms of intonation units,turns and sequences,which is a characteristic of the present study.It is shown that ESM predominantly comes at the beginning of intonation units,at the middle of turns and no preference at sequences.based on chapter 3 and this chapter,the routine pattern of ESM using for stance-taking is given.Chapter 5,The ratios of ESM in intonation units show a clear result that the major factor for ESM is style of speaking.By making MLR(Multiple linear regression),we found that age and gender are uncorrelated variables to ESM,education levels are positively related with ESM,and social relationships are negatively related with ESM.Chapter 6 summarizes the research findings,concludes with the contributions and limitations of this study,and puts forward some suggestions for the future research.The present study provides an interactional analysis of ESM in Mandarin conversation,which is of theoretical and practical significance.On the one hand,the system of ESM is preliminarily constructed,with a routine expressing pattern.On the other hand,we provide a Mandarin case for Linguistic Typology research on this field by focusing on intonation units as the locus or relevant unit for the expression of epistemic stance.