Epistemic downgrading in Cantonese conversations

Abstract

Recent works on epistemicity have focused on how speakers negotiate their epistemic stance in a conversation, i.e. how they can convey neutrality, engagement or detachment toward an utterance (see Fox 2001; Kim 2005, 2011). This study focuses on how native speakers of Cantonese use different strategies to modulate, in particular downgrade, the epistemic strength of their claims in response to the disaffiliative responses from their addressee(s). This study also shows that these strategies are used for politeness reasons – to address the “face” of both the speaker and the addresses.