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This paper focuses on one subtype of stance, namely the epistemic, which includes those
linguistic devices used to provide justificatory support for the proposition (Marín-Arrese
2011a, 2011b, Boye 2012). Epistemic stance comprisesthe three categories that constitute
the general domain of epistemicity: evidentiality, epistemic modality and factivity (Chafe
& Nichols 1986; Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004; Wiemer and Stathi 2010; Boye 2012;
Marín-Arrese 2013; inter alia).
The paper sets forth an English-Spanish contrastive analysis of epistemic stance carried
out on a 200.000-word corpus comprising newspaper opinion articles extracted from four
quality papers, two British and two Spanish, differing in language and ideological
orientation: The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, El País and ABC. The analysis will be
carried out by means of an annotation system and its corresponding tagset based on three
main categories, evidentiality, epistemic modality and factivity, each divided into
subtypes considering factors such as mode of access to the evidence and degree of
explicitness of the conceptualizer of the justificatory support (cf. Marín-Arrese 2015,
2016, 2017).
Based on the previous annotated system, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to discover
the similarities and differences in the distribution and use of the epistemic stance
realisations in the newspaper discourse from both countries; and, more importantly, to
look into the extent to which these linguistic stance markers may reflect similarities and
differences in the expression of ideology. Therefore, the overarching question in this
paper addresses the parameter of ideology according to two variables: the editorial line
of the newspaper, and the English and Spanish culture-specific issues.
We expect results to shed light on the contribution of expressions of epistemic stance to
the construction of ideological identity in English and Spanish newspaper opinion
articles, based on linguistic and ideological similarities and/or differences.