Cognitive-pragmatic aspects of epistemic responsibility attribution

Abstract

The article deals with epistemic responsibility from the perspective of a reader/listener. Viewed as a type of speaker commitment, epistemic responsibility is defined as responsibility for the reliability of what is reported. It is assumed to be verbalized through epistemic modals and evidentials. The relevance of the study is due to a high frequency of the term “commitment”, mainly in studies on the speech act theory, modality and evidentiality, combined with the insufficient theoretical development of the notion. The novelty of the study lies in the identification and description of cognitive and pragmatic features of epistemic responsibility attribution based on an experiment. Objectives of the research included assessing the perception of evidential-epistemic markers as epistemic responsibility indicators by native speakers of Russian, identifying communicative interaction aspects that influence epistemic responsibility attribution, as well as experimental verification of the epistemic responsibility model developed in our earlier studies. The analysis was carried out using a questionnaire designed specifically for this experiment. Respondents were students of non-linguistic areas of training (35 subjects). The study showed that Russian speakers perceive evidential-epistemic markers as epistemic responsibility indicators, and epistemic responsibility attribution is influenced by communication ethics and conventions. The findings proved the validity of the epistemic responsibility model under test. The research also yielded an improved interpretation of the epistemic responsibility concept, which can be considered, on the one hand, as the speaker’s mental state and, on the other hand, as a linguistic image of this state, determined by communication rules and the speaker’s intentions.