The use of certainty adverbs in brazilian portuguese and american english: a Semantic/Pragmatic approach

Abstract

Adverbs of certainty are multifunctional and have social meanings on different dimensions. (Simon-Vandenbergen; Aijmer, 2007). This suggests that adverbs assume a polipragmatic behaviour and can hold, amongst others, the semantic function of modalizers as well as the pragmatic function of politeness markers. In this dissertation, based on data extracted from two comparable spontaneous speech corpora, the main objective is to map and describe the semantic and pragmatic uses of adverbs and adverbial expressions of certainty in both Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and American English (AE). Our main research questions are: 1. how are adverbs of certainty employed in both languages, 2. to what extent does sociocultural variation determine both type and frequency of the indexes, and 3. is there a clear boundary between the semantic and pragmatic content of a certain index? In order to meet the preceding questions, this paper contemplates two main parts: the first one dedicated to the adaptation of a subcorpus of AE to make it comparable to the already existing BP one, and a second part that contemplates a qualitative study of certainty adverbs in such languages. The BP data was extracted from the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus and the AE data from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. It became clear that an accurate picture of adverbs of certainty can only be achieved in a heteroglossic perspective, associated with type of context, social roles and power relations. The analysis shows important differences in the use of adverbs of certainty across both languages, especially when it comes to the use of equivalent adverbs, which are used for different purposes in each language. BP speakers use 1.6x more adverbs of certainty as modal and/or politeness markers than AE speakers, and that may indicate that especially in BP, adverbs of certainty are not merely epistemic markers but also indexes of the speakers stance, power and status. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates an upward curve representing an increased use of modal adverbs in lower diastraty in BP if compared to higher ones, which may indicate socioculturally based differences in the expression of politeness in the two groups. We hope the contrastive analysis of the data will help establish a network of relations and meanings between the semantic and pragmatic use of certainty adverbs, and hopefully contribute to the investigation of modal choices with a concern with their rhetorical effects.