Evidential Verbs in the Genre of Medical Posters: A Corpus-Based Analysis

This volume aims to provide information about
and interpretations of the concept of evidentiality
lexically realized with certain verbs and
applied to the genre of medical posters. More
specifically, issues relating to how knowledge
is conveyed through language will be discussed
and how evidence for such knowledge is linguistically
transmitted in a set of specialised texts.
This study uses some of the possibilities offered
by electronic corpora in conjunction with concordance
tools, which allow quantitative analysis.
Thanks to this quantitative analysis, followed
by a qualitative interpretation of the
findings, we could detect the pragmatic function
these evidential items have in contextual use,
allowing us to see that evidentiality in medical
discourse is intended in a slightly different way
from general discourse.

Stefania M. Maci is a full professor of English
language and translation in the Department of
Languages, Literatures and Communication at
the University of Bergamo. She has completed
her PhD in applied linguistics, Lancaster University,
UK. She has been the local supervisor
and coordinator of local, national and international
research projects (on academic genres).
Her research areas include pragmatics, discourse
analysis and genre analysis with a corpus
linguistics approach, with particular
regards to specialised (academic, medical and
tourism) discourses and their popularization.