چكيده فارسي :
Knowledge has often been substantiated by tagging of sources as evidence of its credibility. In the realm of news discourse, particularly hard news reports, quotations abound, however, studies on reported speech have barely focused on this stratagem in political discourse. To narrow the gap, the current study, which is part of a cross-linguistic study, addressed a functional analysis of evidentiality markers with respect to the representation of and the attitude ascribed to the cited voice. To this end, a bottom-up analysis of 60 news reports, comprising a corpus of about 50,000 words from two quality journals (Kayhan Jomhouri-e Eslami) on two unifying themes (proxy and diplomatic interventions in Syria) was carried out. The analysis in the present study was informed by a number of models including the subsystem of engagement (Martin White, 2005), Van Leeuwen’s (2003) model of social actors, and Hyland’s (1999) work on reporting verbs. Then, theme-based comparisons, source complexity, and qualitative analysis were carried out to delve into the warp and woof of the data. The results bespoke a heavy reliance of both journals on evidentiality to fulfil their vested interests. As regards the functions of evidentials, content analysis revealed that even similar strategies could be used to accomplish dissimilar functions or to bear disparate ideological agendas. The final analysis was allocated to the multi-layered sources, peculiar to the Persian reports. All things considered, Persian reports’ dominant strategy was to denigrate their opponents incorporating deprecatory propositions and to take side concerning the quoted source.
