Epistemic modality markers in Poilsh-English and English-Polish consecutive interpreting : modal values and categories

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the treatment of epistemic modality markers in Polish/English consecutive interpreting tasks with regard to the direction of interpreting. In particular, it focuses on the frequency of transfer of modal meanings to the outputs with regard to the value and category of the markers, looking for regularities and differences which might be attributed to the direction of transfer. Epistemic modality relays the degree of speaker’s commitment to the claim made in the proposition and evaluation of its probability. Epistemic necessity encodes the speaker’s confidence in the truth of the proposition, while epistemic possibility relays lack of confidence in the truth of the statement (Coates 1983), the former expressed by high value modality markers, close to bare, unmodalised assertions (Ex. 1), the latter by middle and low modal values, at the end of the scale close to negation of the propositional meaning (Ex. 2, Halliday 1994).