The apprehensive: Fear as endophoric evidence and its pragmatics in English, Mandarin, and Russian

This study attempts to explicate the cross-linguistically widespread uses of fear expressions that can be understood as serving pragmatic purposes, here dubbed the “apprehensive”, as in I’m afraid I must ask you to leave now. We argue that such uses instantiate “endophoric evidential” (Plungian, 2001) in the sense that the emotion of fear is recruited as direct personal source of information in the construction of epistemological stance. Quantitative collocation data from English, Mandarin, and Russian suggest that the apprehensive strongly attracts a proposition of high-certainty, such as denied ability, asserted predictability, and recognized obligation or necessity. The results call for a pragmatic analysis of the apprehensive as a discourse device of expressing epistemological stance. It prepares the listener of the undesirable news for which the speaker has reliable evidence. The psychology of fear as a basic emotion is discussed as the experiential basis of the pragmatics of the apprehensive. The study suggests that pragmatics is shaped by human cognitive and affective processes and is therefore embodied.

► Fear expressions as endophoric evidential. ► Corpus-based collocation data from English, Mandarin, and Russian show collocation of the apprehensive with high-certainty propositions. ► The psychology of fear motivates the pragmatic function of the apprehensive as a preparatory device in interaction.