La expresión del modo de acceso a la información en entrevistas de diarios argentinos

Abstract

In daily communication, mentioning the source from which information came is a universally used mechanism because, in addition to pointing out its origin, it often serves to give credibility to what is said. This process, in turn, refers to the linguistic category called evidentiality, and its study covers a diversified set of factors. Among the different variables encompassed by the evidential field, one of the main ones is the mode of access, which refers to the way the speaker had access to information. In the present work, the objective was not only to analyze what type of mode of access predominates in Argentina’s newspaper interviews but also to investigate how the interaction between it and some categories related to the evidential domain occurs, observing to what extent these can influence it. Thus, based on studies about evidentiality (AIKHENVALD, 2004; BERMÚDEZ, 2005; HENGEVELD; HATTNHER, 2015), besides the theoretical framework of the Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), the data concerning the mode of access were crossed – with the help of the statistical program SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) – with eight classes, which allude to the different levels of grammatical organization (Interpersonal, Representational and Morphosyntactic) as well as to the contextual aspects of the chosen journalistic genre. In general, the statistics showed the predominance of secondhand information and inferences by logical reasoning. These results, in turn, are consistent with the principles that govern this textual gender, since the interviewees – who have the leading role – usually refer to information that was passed directly to them or that come from their previous knowledge, mechanisms that give a greater degree of credibility to information and, consequently, turn the individuals who mention it into qualified speakers who are capable of arousing public interest.