Svenja Kranich

To hedge or not to hedge: the use of epistemic modal expressions in popular science in English texts, English–German translations, and German original texts

Abstract Hedging plays a significant role in both scientific writing proper and its popularized form. However, most research has concentrated on the former text type, while comparatively little attention has been paid to the phenomenon in popular science. The present study uses a corpus of English popular scientific articles, their German translations, and original German popular scientific articles to investigate the use of epistemic modal markers (such as might, could, perhaps), which represent a common form of hedging, as they serve to mark the speakers uncertainty about the truth of a proposition. The analysis shows noteworthy differences in usage between English and German. The English texts make use of epistemic modal markers much more frequently than the German original texts. Markers expressing mere possibility (e.g., maybe) are particularly more frequent in English, while German rather uses markers of high probability (e.g., probably). These differences can be related to divergent communicative preferences, specifically to a preference for indirectness and addressee-orientation in English texts, contrasting with a preference for directness and content-orientedness in German. The German translated texts are situated inbetween English and German originals, i.e., they exhibit some degree of adaptation to German textual conventions as well as some degree of “shining-through” of the English conventions.

The Progressive in Modern English

This book constitutes the first full-length diachronic treatment of the English progressive from Old English to Present-day English, focusing on the crucial phase of its grammaticalization between the 17th and 20th centuries. It uses data from the British component of ARCHER-2 (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers, version 2) to uncover the details of this long-term grammaticalization process, tracing the development of the construction from a stylistic device to a fully-fledged aspect marker. Illustrated by a wealth of examples, the work offers new results concerning the preferred linguistic environments and the development of the functions of the progressive. In contrast to previous studies, the author shows that there are certain restrictions to context expansion in grammaticalization. She argues convincingly that the persistent reluctance of the progressive to occur in certain contexts does not point to incomplete grammaticalization, but can instead be explained as a product of its particular functions. The author also challenges the tenet that grammaticalization is generally accompanied by subjectification.

Functional layering and the English progressive

Abstract In this article, it will be argued that the concept of functional layering – an extension of Hoppers (1991) concept of layering – can be fruitfully applied to understand the mechanisms behind the sometimes large and messy looking synchronic picture of diverse meanings which one and the same construction can fulfill at a particular point in time. The concept will be used to account for the meaning spectrum of the present-day English progressive, which, it will be argued, no monosemic approach to date can account for. Taking a look at the diachrony of the construction will help to reveal that the various “exceptions” found in the use of the progressive can be understood as reflections of different stages in its development. Older, less grammaticalized or less well-defined usage patterns thus often survive in certain restricted niches next to the newer, more grammaticalized or more clear-cut functions, representing different diachronic layers. In addition to this diachronic motivation for synchronic meaning variety, the article will also address the crucial question of how a present-day hearer of a progressive form is able to decode the specific meaning intended by the speaker based on contextual clues. The article ends with some suggestions for further applications of the concept of functional layering.

Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation

This book provides the first comprehensive account of English-German pragmatic contrasts in written discourse and their effects on English-German translations. The novel and multi-dimensional corpus-based studies of business communication and popular science writing presented in this book combine quantitative and qualitative approaches and focus on the use of evaluative adjectives and epistemic modal markers. They provide empirical evidence that English and German differ in systematic ways and that translations, while being adapted to target audience’s preferences to a large extent, are clearly susceptible to source language interference when it comes to more fine-grained differences. The book discusses which general factors determine the degree of impact of source language features on translations and also comments on the possibility of source language influence on target language norms via translations. The book is of interest to researchers and students in a variety of fields, such as pragmatics, translation studies, genre analysis and stylistics.

L'emploi des expressions épistémiques dans des lettres aux actionnaires en France, aux Etats Unis et en Allemagne

La contribution presente offre une analyse contrastive de l’emploi des expressions epistemiques dans des ‘lettres aux actionnaires’ (le type de document constituant la premiere partie du rapport annuel) provenant des societes francaises, anglo-americaines et allemandes. Jusqu’a maintenant, ce genre central de la communication economique a attire peu d’interet de recherche contrastive (pour des exceptions, voire Suomela-Salmi et Gambier (1994), Flottum, Hemmingsen, Pereira et Unni (1994) et Garzone (2004)). Cependant, l’etude des differences interculturelles est d’une grande importance specifiquement dans les divers genres economiques, en vue de l’interaction professionnelle entre les cultures europeennes et anglo-americaine. Les expressions epistemiques ont ete choisies comme matiere d’investigation d’un cote parce que leur fonction de marquer un manque de certitude les rendent interessantes dans un genre faisant des predictions de futurs evenements. De l’autre cote, des etudes precedentes (par ex. Hyland 1996, 1998) ont montre que les elements epistemiques peuvent aussi assumer la fonction d’attenuer la force des propositions qui autrement risqueraient d’affronter l’allocuteur. Ils sont donc aussi employes dans des contextes ou il n’y a pas un vrai manque de certitude vis-a-vis de la verite de la proposition, mais ou une proposition non-modifiee serait trop negative ou bien risquerait d’apparaitre trop arrogante. C’est en particulier regardant cet emploi interpersonnel des expressions epistemiques ou nous pouvons demontrer des differences interculturelles interessantes. La contribution presente etudie la frequence absolue des elements epistemiques dans des lettres aux actionnaires des trois pays, ainsi que leur distribution a travers les categories grammaticales et les champs semantiques. Cela nous donne l’opportunite de decouvrir de diverses differences interculturelles que l’on peut lier a des ideaux stylistiques et a des preferences communicatives divergentes. L’etude presente peut ainsi contribuer a une meilleure comprehension des differentes conventions gouvernant la creation de ce genre cle de la communication financiere.