Modalité épistémique et discours scientifique - BORA

Modalité épistémique et discours
scientifique
Une étude contrastive des modalisateurs épistémiques dans
des articles de recherche français, norvégiens et anglais, en
linguistique et médecine
Eva Thue Vold
Thèse pour le degré de philosophiae doctor (PhD)
Université de Bergen
2008

Bergen, Norvège 2007

Modalité épistémique et discours
scientifique
Une étude contrastive des modalisateurs épistémiques dans
des articles de recherche français, norvégiens et anglais, en
linguistique et médecine
Eva Thue Vold
Thèse pour le degré de philosophiae doctor (PhD)
Universitetet i Bergen
Institutt for fremmedspråk
Det humanistiske fakultet
2008

ABSTRACT
Epistemic modality markers are linguistic expressions that explicitly qualify the truth value of
a proposition, by marking the informational content as either certain or uncertain. The present
thesis focuses on epistemic modality markers indicating uncertainty, and explores the use of
such markers in academic discourse. The material used is compiled within the larger KIAP-
corpus and is a selection of research articles written in three different languages (French,
Norwegian and English) and belonging to two different disciplines (linguistics and medicine).
Carried out within the framework of the Norwegian KIAP project (Kulturell Identitet i
Akademisk Prosa (Cultural Identity in Academic Prose), the study adopts a doubly contrastive
approach, focusing on variation across languages as well as across disciplines. Gender
differences are also examined.
The first part of the thesis forms the theoretical basis for the analyses and is to a large
extent devoted to a discussion of the concept of modality and to relevant previous research. It
is argued that the linguistic category of modality is traditionally quite poorly defined in the
literature. Consequently, there is not always coherence between its definition and the
linguistic items actually included in it. Considerable emphasis is put on the delimitation of the
category of epistemic modality and the ways in which it differs from and overlaps with related
categories such as alethic modality, sporadicity and hedging.
The second part of the thesis explores the frequency (ch.6) and pragmatic functions
(ch.7) of a selection of epistemic modality markers in the corpus. The study shows that
French-speaking authors use significantly fewer such markers than do English-speaking and
Norwegian authors, suggesting that language background has a large influence on the authors’
use of hedges. As far as frequency is concerned, no major differences were observed between
the disciplines, nor between male and female authors. However, the factors of discipline and
language seem to be interrelated, in the sense that differences between languages are larger
within linguistics than within medicine, thus illustrating the fact that medicine is a more
internationalised discipline than linguistics. Moreover, the two disciplines seem to prefer
different types of markers, and there are notable differences when it comes to the pragmatic
functions the markers tend to have. In the medical texts, the occurrences most often have a
content-oriented function, i.e. they are used to indicate hypotheses, to hedge conclusions or to
signal methodological limitations. These usages, except for the latter (which seems to be
typical of experimental articles), are also frequent in the linguistic texts, but in addition the
linguists make use of more interpersonal functions. For example, they use epistemic modality
to mitigate criticism put forward against the work of others and to signal precaution while
interpreting other researchers’ texts or findings. These observations reflect the fact that the
norms for argumentation differ between disciplines. Overt and direct argumentation is more
recurrent in linguistics than in medicine, and thus the use of epistemic modality or hedging as
a politeness strategy is more frequent in linguistic articles than in medical ones.
The findings are relevant for teachers and students of academic writing as well as for
anyone involved in cross-cultural communication between researchers.