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Topic

“I think they said Cedar Hill was the original Mount Doug…”: Sociolinguistic Variation in English Evidential Verbs

School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures

Date & location

• Tuesday, July 29, 2025
• 10:00 A.M.
• Virtual Defence

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Alexandra D’Arcy, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, ���ɱ��� (Supervisor)
• Dr. Peter Grund, School of Divinity & Department of English, Yale University (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Scott Kiesling, Department of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Anelyse Weiler, Department of Sociology, UVic

Abstract

In English, linguistic means for marking evidentiality—the expression of information source—are optional and typically lexical or phrasal. This optionality opens up the possibility that language-external factors influence how information source is marked in informal speech. This thesis provides a sociolinguistic analysis of verbal evidentiality in English, a topic that has not been extensively explored in the existing literature. Through a form-to-function-based corpus analysis, this study examines how evidential verbs function in informal speech, focusing on their functional, social, and pragmatic dimensions, exploring the potential for age, gender, and socioeconomic status to affect language users’ deployment of evidential verbs. A total of 5,031 evidential verbs were extracted from interviews with 182 lifelong residents of Victoria, British Columbia, and categorized into three evidential types: sensory, hearsay, and inferential. The findings suggest that the English evidential system is undergoing change, particularly in the increasing use of inferential evidential verbs and the decline in hearsay evidential verbs. Notably, younger speakers and women—particularly those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds—are more likely to employ verbs that encode inferential evidentiality.

Qualitative analysis suggests that evidential verbs not only signal information source but also play a key role in constructing stance, managing epistemic authority, and navigating politeness. This research contributes to our understanding of evidentiality as a dynamic and socially embedded linguistic resource. It highlights the increasing role of a small set of inferential verbs in enabling language users to balance authority with epistemic caution, reflecting broader social expectations and discourse norms.