engleski

Verbs of visual perception as evidentials in research article texts in English and Croatian

This paper analyses the use of verbs of visual perception in research articles in English and Croatian, claiming that in academic discourse these verbs are used as functional evidentials. The term evidentiality is used in the meaning of a broad cognitive category that reflects natural epistemology. As natural epis¬temology is based on assessing evidence, we assume that the prominence of verbs of visual perception in research articles is pragmatically motivated by the wish to make the claims more reliable, reflecting the fact that the acquisition of knowledge in research begins with observing and seeing, on the basis of which we make inferences. An analysis of evidential rhetorical strategies is conducted on a corpus of 95 original research articles in English and 70 in Croatian in nine disciplines, and it is found that the typical syntactic frames in which verbs of visual perception are used in research article texts in both languages and all the disciplines analysed can be considered as conventionalized rhetorical de¬vices used to ensure the acceptance of the claims made in the text.

verbs of visual perception, evidential rhetorical strategies, research article texts

nije evidentirano