Interpersonal Functions Of Evidentiality In The Live-stream Shopping Discourse

Evidentiality refers to the source of the speaker’s knowledge and the speaker’s commitment to the reliability of that knowledge.The linguistic mark of it is called "evidential".Investigating evidentiality is a constant concern within the field of discourse analysis.Despite numerous studies of evidentiality,only a few studies use live-stream shopping discourse as a corpus.Therefore,the present study aims to explore how evidentials are distributed and employed in live-stream shopping discourse(LSSD)as well as the interpersonal functions they perform in LSSD.In order to achieve the purposes of this study,the author,guided by Hu Zhuanglin’s classification of evidentiality,attempts to answer the following two research questions:1)Are there evidentials in LSSD? If so,what is the frequency and distribution of each evidential?2)What interpersonal functions does each evidential fulfill in LSSD?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in the study.A quantitative approach is adopted in the process of data analysis.The author collects 442 playback videos from the American HSN live streaming platform,converts them into texts and manually proofread them to construct the LSSD corpus.By employing qualitative modes of inquiry,the study first uses an inductive approach to summarize the interpersonal functions fulfilled by each evidential,and then interprets how each element fulfilled interpersonal functions.The results reveal that all seven types of evidentials are employed in the corpus.The frequency of occurrence is as follows: deductive evidential > inductive evidential >expectation evidential > reliability evidential > verbal resources evidential > belief evidential > hearsay evidential.It can be found that the proportion of deduction evidential is the highest,while the proportion of hearsay evidential is the lowest.The reason is that the anchors cannot communicate with audiences face-to-face in the live-stream shopping discourse.Therefore,they prefer to construct a virtual experience to persuade audiences to buy products that shortened the distance between them.As a kind of persuasive discourse,the live-stream shopping discourse is always used by the anchors to achieve the goal of persuasion.Hence,they rely on more subjective and first-hand evidential rather than indirect evidential.Therefore,the proportion of hearsay evidential is the lowestThe seven types of evidentials have fulfilled different interpersonal functions.The deductive evidential reflects the different credibility of the information provided by the speakers and also assists the speakers in gaining the trust of the audience.Inductive evidential is used by speakers to assume responsibility and shorten the social distance between them and their audiences.Hearsay evidential increases the credibility of the audience and helps speakers shift responsibility.The belief evidential is used to shorten the distance between the speaker and the audience,represents the speaker’s degree of responsibility,and at the same time gains the trust of the audience.The reliability evidential shows a commitment to the validity of the statement,and different reliability creates room for negotiation between the speaker and the audience.The expectation evidential reveals the speaker’s ideology,and shows the speaker’s attitude,evaluation,and certainty towards the proposition.The verbal resources evidential promotes the smooth progress of the dialogue,helps the anchor express the uncertainty of the information and avoids potential disputes.By analyzing the distribution and usage of evidentiality in live-stream shopping discourse,this study finds that a close relationship existed among the choice of the anchor’s discourse,evidentiality and the audience’s feedbacks,which in turn has implications for the construction of a new and harmonious relationship between the anchor and the customer.Secondly,exploring the interpersonal meanings conveyed by evidentiality not only broadens the scope of research on evidentiality but also advances the understanding of evidentiality for audiences,thus assists audiences in developing their ability to use it.