HEDGED ASSERTIONS IN MOMADAY’S THE MAN MADE OF WORDS

Authors

  • Guillermo Bartelt California State University, Northridge, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejls.v3i1.309

Keywords:

American Indian non-fiction, stylistics, evidential and attitudinal hedges

Abstract

In essays elucidating his beliefs in the sacredness of the Southwestern landscape, the relevance of American Indian oral tradition, and the power of language in shaping Native worldviews, Scott Momaday frequently qualifies declarative sentences focusing on these themes with evidential hedges formed with epistemic modals and adverbials as well as with attitudinal hedges consisting of pronoun-verb constructions. Since an assertion implies knowledge of the proposition, hedges are therefore indicative of a distancing from convictions of its truth, or at least of a weakened commitment to its assertoric force.

Author Biography

  • Guillermo Bartelt, California State University, Northridge, USA
    Guillermo Bartelt is a sociolinguist with a focus on the English varieties of American Indians at the spoken as well as written levels.

References

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Published

2021-12-21

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2021)

Section

Articles

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