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Article published In:
Certainty and Uncertainty in Dialogue
Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski
[Language and Dialogue 4:1] 2014
► pp. 58–75

I haven’t spoken to him about it

Evidentiality in White House press briefings

| University of Vechta

White House press briefings have the function of providing journalists with first-hand information on present activities of the US-American administration. The Press Secretary, currently Jay Carney, mainly draws on indirect reportative evidentialiy, referring to recent utterances by the President. However, owing to the often critical and persistent inquiries by investigative journalists based on counter-evidentiality, the Press Secretary frequently resorts to evasive manoeuvres. Moreover, he commonly refuses to use logical inferencing in his function as a mouthpiece of the government, since speculations might be potentially harmful when given to the press. Thus, the present paper investigates the possibilities and limitations of evidentiality in this interview genre from a discourse-analytical perspective on the basis of an online archive of transcripts.

Keywords: information source, evidentiality, press briefing, quotation, interview genre, political discourse, persuasion
Published online: 20 May 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.4.1.04sch
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