Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between

378 Pages·2014·4.83 MB·Studies in Language Companion Series 165

by  Sibilla Cantarini, Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss

Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between
Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS)
This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical
Studies in Language.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs
Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / Arizona State University
University of Munich
Editorial Board
Bernard Comrie Christian Lehmann
Max Planck Institute, Leipzig University of Erfurt
and University of California, Santa Barbara
Marianne Mithun
William Croft University of California, Santa Barbara
University of New Mexico
Heiko Narrog
Östen Dahl Tohuku University
University of Stockholm
Johanna L. Wood
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal University of Aarhus
University of Cologne
Debra Ziegeler
Ekkehard König University of Paris III
Free University of Berlin
Volume 165
Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between
Edited by Sibilla Cantarini, Werner Abraham and Elisabeth Leiss
Certainty-uncertainty – and the
Attitudinal Space in Between
Edited by
Sibilla Cantarini
University of Verona
Werner Abraham
University of Vienna & Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich
Elisabeth Leiss
Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty : Linguistic, Psychological, Philosophical
Aspects (Conference) (2012 : Università di Macerata).
Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between / Edited by Sibilla
Cantarini, Werner Abraham and Elisabeth Leiss.
p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165-7763 ; v. 165)
“The papers collated in this volume were all presented at the international conference
entitled The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty : Linguistic,
Psychological and Philosophical Aspects held at the University of Macerata
from 3 to 5 October 2012.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Communication--Psychological aspects--Congress. 2. Psycholinguistics--Congress.
I. Cantarini, Sibilla, editor. II. Abraham, Werner, editor. III. Leiss, Elisabeth,
editor.
P96.P75C66 2012
302.23’019--dc23 2014035750
isbn 978 90 272 5930 1 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6914 0 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Dedicated to Franz Hundsnurscher

Table of contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Werner Abraham, Sibilla Cantarini & Elisabeth Leiss
chapter 1. Certainty: The conceptual differential
Certainty: Its conceptual differential 29
Werner Abraham
Modes of modality in an Un-Cartesian framework 47
Elisabeth Leiss
chapter 2. (Un)Certainty as attitudinality
Counter-argumentation and modality 65
Vincenzo Lo Cascio
Explanation as a certainty marker in persuasive dialogue 83
Michel Dufour
How to deal with attitude strength in debating situations: A survey
on forewarning, argument strength, repetition, and source credibility
as mediators of uncertainty 97
Manuele De Conti
The role of subjective certainty in the epistemology of testimony:
A contextualist perspective 121
Michel Croce
Uncertainty in polar questions and certainty in answers? 135
Judit Kleiber & Gábor Alberti
Lying as a scalar phenomenon: Insincerity along
the certainty-uncertainty continuum 153
Neri Marsili
Persuasion pragmatic strategies in L1/L2 Italian argumentative speech 175
Luisa Salvati
iii Certainty-uncertainty – and the Attitudinal Space in Between
chapter 3. Dialogical exchange and speech acts
What do I know as yet? 185
Franz Hundsnurscher
On polar questions, negation, and the syntactic encoding of epistemicity 199
Sibilla Cantarini & Jacopo Torregrossa
Epistemic uncertainty and the syntax of speech acts 217
Kate E. Judge
Discursive functions of evidentials and epistemic modals 239
Etsuko Oishi
chapter 4. Onomasiology
Vagueness, unspecificity, and approximation: Cognitive and lexical
aspects in English, Swedish, and Italian 265
Jens Allwood, Elisabeth Ahlsén, Isabella Poggi,
Laura Vincze & Francesca D’Errico
Latin commitment-markers: scilicet and videlicet 285
Josine Schrickx
Italian come se “as if”: Evidential and epistemic aspects 297
Andrzej Zuczkowski, Gianluca Colella, Ilaria Riccioni,
Ramona Bongelli & Carla Canestrari
chapter 5. Applications in exegesis and religious discourse
The communication of certainty/uncertainty within
a Gospel passage (John 9: 1–41) 327
Lucia Salvato
Rhetorics of (un)certainty in religious discourse 343
Rosa Scardigno & Giuseppe Mininni
Subject index 363
Preface
The papers collated in this volume were all presented at the international con-
ference entitled The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty: Linguistic,
Psychological and Philosophical Aspects held at the University of Macerata from
3rd to 5th October 2012. Conceived as a forum for interdisciplinary compari-
son on the general theme of the communication of certainty and uncertainty,
the conference had great resonance in the scientific community. Organized by
Andrzej Zuczkowski (University of Macerata, President), Sibilla Cantarini (Uni-
versity of Verona, Co-president), Anita Fetzer (University of Würzburg, Co-pres-
ident), and Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni, and Carla Canestrari (University of
Macerata, Organizing Committee), the issues were analysed from the perspective
of various research topics and methods, making it an important inter- and mul-
tidisciplinary event. The invited speakers were: Werner Abraham (University of
Vienna & Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich); Elisabeth Leiss (Ludwig-
Maximilians-University of Munich); and Jan Nuyts (University of Antwerp).
In addition, there were a further 134 speakers from 32 different countries
across all the 5 continents: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, the
Russian Federation, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Italy, Canada,
Colombia, México, Brazil, South Africa, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, the USA, Japan,
China, Morocco, Australia, Argentina, and India. The programme comprised the
following sessions: Religion, Specific Languages, Music, Media, Law, Multimo-
dality, Communicative Interaction, Scientific Writing, Theory of Mind, Interac-
tion at School, (Un)Certainty across Ages, Decision making, Humour, P olitics,
Literature, Second Language and Contrastive Studies, Academic-I nstitutional
Discourse, Doctor-Patient Interaction, Philosophy, and Argumentation and Per-
suasion, as well as three specific sessions devoted to the Italian, German, and
French Languages.
The conference was dedicated to Franz Hundsnurscher, Professor Emeritus
at the University of Münster, known to the entire international scientific com-
munity for his studies on dialogue, and János Sándor Petöfi, Professor of Philoso-
phy of Language at the University of Macerata from 1989 to 2006. János Sándor
Petöfi, who unfortunately passed away in February 2013, was known for his Text
Theory, in particular his model of deep structure – the so-called Atomic Text. This
is one of the theoretical backbones of the research on the relationships between
language and cognitive processes being carried out at the Research Centre for