Pragmatics and Society 2/2012 [antikvár]

The idea of publishing the present Special Issue on 'Evidentiality originated in a conversation that Bili Hanks and myself had in March of 2009, while attending a workshop at Nihon Joshi Daigaku (Japans Women's University), Tokyo. I had just laid the groundwork for the new journal, Pragmatics & Society, and needed both people who would serve on the editorial board and people who could direct me to excellent contributors and their works. Bili fiiled both slots: he joined the editorial board and half a year later, introduced me to the people who had been organizing a panel on 'Evidentiality' at the LSA meeting in Baltimore, January 2010. Thanks to Bilis intercession and the subsequent contacts with the panel's organizers, now the Guest Editors of the present issue, Janis Nuckolls and Lev Michael, our readers can look at the finished product, for which Bili graciously has agreed to write an introductory essay in which he bundles and distills his remarks at the workshop, piacing them in the wider perspective of evidentiality in interaction. Bili Hanks' essay (presented below as a 'Foreword') is the perfect backdrop against which to consider the Special Issue, as it clarifies somé generál notions on evidentiality, and indicates how these have been applied in the individual contributions. He alsó lines up several "maxims for research" on evidentiality, in particular by characterizing the pragmatic effects that determine an utterance's status: source of knowledge, source of statement, and speakers expressive stance (or 'interactional force). The often complex relationship between evidentiality and deixis is illustrated by outlining the dimensions on which they are similar and on which they diíFer: both evidential marking and deictic techniques are types of indexicality, but they differ widely in the ways they are distributed among the world's languages, as well in their individual relationships. In all of this, one should not forget that the interactional component of evidentiality situates its phenomena solidly within talk-in-interaction as its "functional space", as Hanks calls it. It is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome this Special Issue and its contributors and thank them for their efforts, which our readers will know to appreciate in the pages that follow. A particular thanks is due to the Guest Editors, Janis Nuckolls and Lev Michael, for their relentless and gracious collaboration in making this collection of papers available to the reading public, and to Bili Hanks for his maieutic role in the process. Austin, 17 October 2011 Jacob L. Mey Editor-in-Chief, Pragmatics and Society