What genres tell us about evidentials and vice versa. A study of al parecer in Spanish parliamentary debates

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to delve into the influence of contextual discursive factors in determining the type of evidential chosen and the pragmatic functions developed by evidentials in Spanish parliamentary discourse; second, it shows how evidentials can also provide useful new insight on the genre. A corpus study has been carried out studying the Spanish evidential discourse marker al parecer in parliamentary debates. The analysis shows how real examples of al parecer hardly fit any category of evidentials posited previously; data also illustrates how factors such as the discursive role or the part of the parliamentary process do affect the meaning of al parecer and change the pragmatic nuances conveyed by the discourse marker.

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, MINECO (projects FFI2013- 40905-P, La atenuación pragmática en el español hablado: su variación diafásica y diatópica and FFI2016-75249-P, La atenuación pragmática en su variación genérica: Géneros discursivos escritos y orales en el español de España y América).