Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts

422 Pages·2014·3.19 MB·English

by  Andrzej Zuczkowski

Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical,
Supportive and Scientific Contexts
Dialogue Studies (DS)
Dialogue Studies takes the notion of dialogicity as central; it encompasses every type
of language use, workaday, institutional and literary. By covering the whole range of
language use, the growing field of dialogue studies comes close to pragmatics and
studies in discourse or conversation. The concept of dialogicity, however, provides
a clear methodological profile. The series aims to cross disciplinary boundaries
and considers a genuinely inter-disciplinary approach necessary for addressing the
complex phenomenon of dialogic language use. This peer reviewed series will include
monographs, thematic collections of articles, and textbooks in the relevant areas.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/ds
Editor Assistant Editor
Edda Weigand Sebastian Feller
University of Münster A*STAR - Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore
Editorial Advisory Board
Adelino Cattani Fritjof Haft Talbot J. Taylor
Università di Padova University of Tübingen College of William and Mary
Kenneth N. Cissna John E. Joseph Wolfgang Teubert
University of South Florida University of Edinburgh University of Birmingham
François Cooren Werner Kallmeyer Linda R. Waugh
Université de Montréal University of Mannheim University of Arizona
Robert T. Craig Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni Elda Weizman
University of Colorado at Université Lyon 2 Bar Ilan University
Boulder
Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring Yorick Wilks
Marcelo Dascal Hochschule für Technik und University of Sheffield
Tel Aviv University Wirtschaft Berlin
Valeri Demiankov Geoffrey Sampson
Russian Academy of Sciences University of Sussex
Marion Grein Masayoshi Shibatani
University of Mainz Rice University
Volume 25
Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive
and Scientific Contexts
Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
Communicating Certainty
and Uncertainty in Medical,
Supportive and Scientific Contexts
Edited by
Andrzej Zuczkowski
Ramona Bongelli
Ilaria Riccioni
Carla Canestrari
University of Macerata
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific
Contexts / Edited by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni and
Carla Canestrari.
p. cm. (Dialogue Studies, issn 1875-1792 ; v. 25)

“International Conference “The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty:
Linguistic, Psychological, Philosophical Aspects, organised by Andrzej
Zuczkowski (University of Macerata), Sibilla Cantarini (University of Verona),
and Anita Fetzer (University of Würzburg) and held at the University of
Macerata (Italy) from the 3rd to the 5th of October 2012.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Science in mass media. 2. Communication in science. 3. Communication in
psychology. 4. Communication in medicine. 5. Discoveries in science.
6.  Science--Social aspects. I. Zuczkowski, Andrzej, editor. II. Bongelli,
Ramona, editor. III. Riccioni, Ilaria, editor. IV. Canestrari, Carla, editor.
P96.S33C64 2014
501’.4--dc23 2014031355
isbn 978 90 272 1042 5 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6921 8 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Preface 1
Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni
and Carla Canestrari
Part I. Theoretical and general models
CHAPTER 1
Subjectivity in modality, and beyond 13
Jan Nuyts
CHAPTER 2
Certainty and uncertainty in assertive speech acts 31
Paolo Labinaz and Marina Sbisà
CHAPTER 3
Ideal and deviant interlocutors in a formal interpretation system 59
Gábor Alberti, Noémi Vadász and Judit Kleiber
CHAPTER 4
On being certain whether: A puzzle about indirect interrogatives 79
Klaus Hölker
CHAPTER 5
Uncertainty as integrated part of meaning and understanding 99
Sebastian Feller
CHAPTER 6
Epistemic stance: Knowing, Unknowing, Believing (KUB) positions 115
Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Laura Vincze
and Ilaria Riccioni
vi Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty
Part II. Medical and supportive interactions
CHAPTER 7
Requesting help with null or limited knowledge:
Entitlements and responsibility in emergency calls 139
Giolo Fele
CHAPTER 8
The journey to advice: Balancing certainty and uncertainty
in doctor delivery of expert opinion 157
Marilena Fatigante and Saverio Bafaro
CHAPTER 9
Diagnostic news delivery: A microanalysis of the use of shields 183
Anna Franca Plastina and Fabrizia Del Vecchio
CHAPTER 10
Epistemic struggles in addiction Therapeutic Community meetings 201
Marco Pino
CHAPTER 11
Embodying epistemicity: Negotiating (un)certainty
through semiotic objects 223
Gabriella B. Klein, Koffi M. Dossou and Sergio Pasquandrea
Part III. Scientific writing and academic communication
CHAPTER 12
The fabric of certainty: Ignoring interactional details
as an epistemic resource in research interviews 249
Letizia Caronia
CHAPTER 13
Hedging and attitude markers in Spanish and English
scientific medical writing 273
Sonia Oliver del Olmo
Table of contents vii
CHAPTER 14
A theoretical contribution to tackling certainty and uncertainty
in scientific writing: Four research articles from the journal
Brain in focus 291
Maria da Graça Pinto, Paulo Osório and Fernanda Martins
CHAPTER 15
BioUncertainty: A historical corpus evaluating uncertainty
language over a 167-year span of biomedical scientific articles 309
Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni, Carla Canestrari,
Ricardo Pietrobon and Andrzej Zuczkowski
CHAPTER 16
Uncertainty markers in a corpus of German biomedical papers
from Spektrum der Wissenschaft (1993–2012) 341
Paola Bucciarelli, Ramona Bongelli, Andrzej Zuczkowski,
Sibilla Cantarini and Christine Berthold
CHAPTER 17
Questioning certainty in research articles and popular science
articles: A case-study of modalized wh-interrogatives 369
Elsa Pic and Grégory Furmaniak
CHAPTER 18
Self-repairs and certainty in Romanian academic meetings 389
Adina I. Velea
About the authors 403
Index 411

Preface
Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli,
Ilaria Riccioni and Carla Canestrari
Communicating a spoken or written piece of information as certain or uncertain
plays a significant role both in building knowledge or belief in the hearers/read-
ers’ minds and in choosing the suitable linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour
during and after the communication process.
For example, a piece of biomedical information communicated as certain
(“we know that drug x cures illness y”) or as uncertain (“we suppose that drug
x cures illness y”) results in different thoughts and subsequent actions from the
scientific community and/or patients. National healthcare policies are built on the
basis of how certain or uncertain the results from biomedical research might be
communicated. Clinical practice guidelines also follow the same rationale, with
the adoption of a new therapy, prevention or diagnostic new conduct.
This volume focuses on how speakers and writers express their individual de-
grees of certainty or uncertainty towards the piece of information they are giving
hearers/readers during the communicative process, i.e., in the here and now of
communication.
Out of the 18 papers collected in the book, 161 were selected from those pre-
sented at the International Conference “The Communication of Certainty and
Uncertainty: Linguistic, Psychological, Philosophical Aspects”, organised by
Andrzej Zuczkowski (University of Macerata), Sibilla Cantarini (University of
Verona), and Anita Fetzer (University of Würzburg) and held at the University of
Macerata (Italy) from the 3rd to the 5th of October 2012.2
1. We are grateful to Marina Sbisà and Paolo Labinaz and to Sebastian Feller for accepting our
invitation to add their two contributions to the volume.
2. A detailed report on this conference, that was attended by almost 150 speakers, was pub-
lished in Language & Dialogue, 2013, 3(2): 329–334. In addition to the present one, other
collections of articles selected from the same conference were published (Zuczkowski and
Caronia (eds.), Journal of Theories and Research in Education, Special Issue “Communicating
Certainty and Uncertainty: Multidisciplinary Perspective on Epistemicity in Everyday Life”,