Experientiality and evidentiality: a linguistic analysis of the expression of sensory perception in travel journalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is written from both a linguistic and a narrative perspective and focuses on the relation between linguistic evidentiality and narrative experientiality in travel stories written by journalists. By narrating their sensory perceptions, journalists recreate their experiences for their readers. Linguistically speaking, they use evidential markers in order to make this recreation possible. In narratology, the term experientiality is used for this inclusion of the author’s perception. From a corpus of ten travel stories, the article collects the expressions that explicitly mention their authors’ sensory perceptions. The analysis shows that the explicit marking of perception can serve a twofold narrative and evidential purpose. On the one hand it can be a form of narrative persuasion, emphasising the experience of the journalist. On the other hand, it can be used to enhance the truth value of the linguistic expression, emphasising the witness position of the journalist.