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Abstract: Despite a sense of familiarity casually assumed in their mutual perceptions, pragmatics and rhetoric remain estranged from each other, and “the notion of rhetoric and its relation to pragmatics” continues to puzzle pragmaticists in general. In this paper we take a close look at how the two disciplines have interacted so far, identifying discrepancies and misunderstandings in their approaches to each other and tracing those problems to some deeply embedded disciplinary differences. Following an analysis of these differences, we reflect on how the two disciplines can work together in their broadly shared pursuits, proposing that they adopt a classical model of interdisciplinary relationship and treat the other as one''s antistrophos. An antistrophos-based relationship is capable of accommodating the intricacies and complexities of a multi-faceted relationship. It is conducive to a “reciprocal and reversible” kind of disciplinary self-invention in both fields. And most significantly, it exhorts against treating each other as an object for appropriation, or as an other to be turned into the same. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of self-initiated self-repair in weight loss discussions within clinical settings. It shows that one of the primary functions of self-repair is to manage epistemics in talk. The study explores repair operations and techniques, shedding light on the linguistic resources employed by doctors and patients to modify knowledge claims in relation to their interactional objectives, the speaker's epistemic status, and the epistemic stance expressed by the interlocutor. Throughout the paper, we demonstrate how self-initiated self-repairs contribute to achieving epistemic balance and congruence in talk between healthcare providers and seekers, supporting the smooth delivery of unsolicited weight loss advice. Data are in British English. • Both doctors and patients engage in self-repair to adjust their knowledge claims regarding weight management. • Doctors and patients show distinct repair styles aligned with their institutional roles. • In contrast to doctors, patients tend to perform more exposed repairs, openly rejecting their own projected turns. • Self-repairs sustain epistemic balance and congruence in talk on weight loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ventriloquizing, where a speaker adopts another's voice or identity to communicate one's own thoughts, is a form of indirectness that remains understudied, particularly in Chinese medical interactions. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of indirectness by examining instances of ventriloquizing employed by medical professionals (MPs) in China. Our analysis reveals that MPs utilize ventriloquizing by attributing speech to themselves, their interlocutors or third parties (such as patients or their family members), or sometimes unspecified individuals. Through this strategic linguistic technique, MPs mitigate complaints, advocate medical suggestions, and informs patients and families of potential risks, all while delicately navigating various interactional concerns such as doctor-patient rapport and issues of medical liability. This paper argues that MPs' employment of ventriloquizing serves to decenter themselves, enhance message authority, and maintain relational harmony, thereby achieving both relational and transactional goals in medical interactions. This practice reflects Confucianism-based medical ethics in the Chinese medical context. • Ventriloquizing is a form of indirectness in medical encounters. • Medical professionals employ ventriloquizing in interactional sequences. • Ventriloquizing helps to soften complaint tones, distance patients from undesirable options, and preempt future disputes. • Ventriloquizing facilitates achieving relational and transactional goals indirectly. • Ventriloquizing enables subtle and strategic interaction to maintain a harmonious doctor-patient relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During scenic opera rehearsals, the participants create performance bodies – fictive behaviours that portray the characters in the libretto. They use depictions – interactional practices comprised of short scenes staged for the other participants – to propose and negotiate performance bodies that suit the developing aesthetics of the production. In this paper, we focus on non-serious proposal depictions: depictions that become treated as laughable and not suitable for the performance. Non-serious depictions can accomplish joint fictionalizations, especially with teasing (Cantarutti, 2022), and are used in contrast with an ideal performance (Keevallik, 2010). Building on this work, we analyze how non-serious depictions are used to decide what the wished performance will be. We discuss two types of non-serious depictions in the workplace setting of the opera rehearsal process and show how negotiations over the seriousness of depictions achieve aesthetic intersubjectivity among the colleagues. The ambiguity between serious and non-serious proposals is exploited as a resource when navigating the unknown territories of a piece of art under development. The material consists of 20 h of video-recorded opera rehearsals in Swedish and English, with an Italian libretto. • Opera rehearsal participants use depictions in proposals to create a performance. • Depictions can be designed as either serious or non-serious. • This paper focuses on how depictions are designed and treated as non-serious. • Non-serious depictions can be treated as tangential to the interactional agenda. • They can also be a tool to manage aesthetic intersubjectivity and affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we link between two scholarly traditions that share the goal of understanding how people accomplish the achievement of living together: linguistic-politeness and diplomacy. We look at a specific speech event—presidential introductory conversations during credential ceremonies, in which the interlocutors are simultaneously talking on behalf of themselves and the states they represent. On the basis of 23 introductory conversations at Israel's presidential residence. We aim to understand how good relations are cultivated in diplomatic conversations and the resources and strategies hosting presidents and foreign ambassadors employ to establish amicable interpersonal and interstate relations. The infusion of elite discourse, institutional discourse, and initial interactions brought forth in our study a gamut of bonding strategies applied in the process of rapport management between state representatives. The president and ambassadors did their best to avoid sensitive issues and managed the attending audience as a resource for enhancing interpersonal relations, advancing the interaction, and solving problems at both the interstate and interpersonal levels. In the Conclusion we underline the importance of analyzing actual conversations between individuals who simultaneously embody themselves and their states in order to understand how relationships between large social entities are managed. • The paper links between two related scholarly traditions: politeness and diplomacy. • It asks how amicable interpersonal and interstate relations are cultivated in diplomatic conversations. • We analyze 23 introductory conversations between Israel's president and foreign ambassadors. • A variety of strategies are applied for bonding between state representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will analyze the set of markers that have been associated with exclamative sentence-type and exclamations in Romance, like Catalan ma, mira, que , and si , Italian guarda and che , or Spanish mira, que, si , and vaya. The hypothesis I will defend is that the meaning encoded by each of these markers contribute to create an exclamation speech act. I will show that we must first distinguish mirative markers like ma, mira or guarda , which encode the surprise attitude of the speaker towards a proposition. A second class of elements are degree operators, like si , which create the necessary domain extension on which the attitude of the speaker is built. Finally, I will show that que / che is a marker of exclamative sentence-type. In the second part of the article I will show that these pragmatic differences have a transparent reflex in syntax: mirative markers occupy the Judge Phrase position in Krifka's Speech Act Layer, above ForceP and vocatives, so they may combine with different sentence-types, besides exclamatives. In ForceP we find degree operators (and exclamative wh -phrases) in its specifier, and the sentence-type marker que / che in its head. All in all, the paper aims at showing that a compositional approach to exclamativity can deal with the rich set of pragmatic and syntactic properties of exclamative markers in Romance. • Exclamativity and mirativity are two distinct pragmatic categories, with specialized markers. • Mirative markers are typically found with exclamative sentences, but they may appear with other sentence-types as well. • The set of pragmatic and syntactic properties of exclamative particles in Romance can be explained compositionally. • Data from exclamative markers support a rich syntax-pragmatics interface along the lines of the Cartographic Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Declarative sentences are known to be compatible with a wide range of different speech acts. The paper develops, for German, a proposal in which declarative sentences that express assertions, declarations (including explicit performatives), exclamations, wishes, commands, observations (or miratives), reminders and questions have slightly distinct syntactic representations and, consequently, semantic interpretations. The syntactic representation allows for epistemic and evidential modifications of assertions and for markers of assertive strength by speechact-related adverbials and by embedding verbal predicates that are usually analyzed as parenthetical. It also contains new proposals for evidential modal verbs and for the reportative subjunctive in German. Speech acts are interpreted as common ground updates that typically do not only involve an informative update but also a performative update that changes the worldtime indices of the common ground. This does not only hold for declarations but also for assertions and exclamations, where the former are analyzed as creating a commitment to the truth of a proposition, and the latter as committing to an emotional attitude. In contrast to proposals that relegate the illocutionary interpretation of declarative clauses largely to pragmatics, the paper develops a perspective in which it is predominantly a matter of syntactic structure and compositional interpretation. • Syntax and semantics of different interpretations of declarative sentences. • Assertions, declarations, exclamations, wishes, observations, reminders, questions. • Speech acts as updates of common ground. • Modifications of assertions by epistemic, evidential and commitment strength markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharing experience via social media communication has been examined in psychology, sociology, communication and linguistic studies. While this research has mostly examined consumption experience and health issues, how people make meanings and develop interactions while sharing mundane matters needs more investigation. This paper reports on a pragmatic investigation into individuals sharing their exam experiences in social media groups. Data were collected from two support groups on Douban , a Chinese social networking site that encourages users to share their thoughts, interests and experiences. A total of 400 original posts, 200 each from a group sharing experiences of failure in examinations and a group sharing their success in examinations, were collected and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings showed that the two groups were significantly different in the ways they voluntarily disclosed their identities and in the types of expressions they employed to refer to different participants. In addition, they differed significantly in how they sought or offered support in interactions. Similarities and differences between the two groups' sharing are discussed in relation to the instructions of the two groups, their identity construction, the affordances of social media, and the importance of politeness and face in Chinese culture. • This paper reports on a pragmatic investigation into individuals sharing their exam experiences in social media groups. • The failure and the success groups were significantly different in the ways they voluntarily disclosed their identities. • They were also significantly different in the types of expressions used to refer to different participants. • They differed significantly in how they sought or offered support in interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how apology strategies are used to rebuild the public's trust using evidence from Chinese e-commerce live-streaming hosts' apology letters. It is found that live-streaming hosts can use two strategies to rebuild the public's trust: apology-related metalanguage labels and apology-related supportive moves. The former are routine formulas generally used to give an explicit apology, such as "sorry." The latter are strategies used to support apology-related metalanguage labels, including offering explanations, taking responsibility, making promises, showing empathy, and expressing integrity. Further quantitative analyses indicate that metalanguage labels alone cannot rebuild the public's trust. Trust can be rebuilt only by combining metalanguage labels and supportive moves. This paper contributes to the theoretical study of trustworthiness building in the public arena and can enhance trust relationships between e-commerce and the public. • E-commerce live-streaming hosts use apology letters to build trust. • The apology letters include metalanguage labels and supportive moves. • Metalanguage labels (apology) alone cannot rebuild public trust. • Trust can be built by combining apology and supportive moves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what I call Dissociative Syntactic Amalgam (DSA) constructions, observed in conversation parts of fictional varieties of English, such as film/TV scripts and novels. I provide 27 cases of DSAs, most of which come from Corpus of Contemporary American English and Movie Corpus. A paradigm example is I get off at ten past I'm never going out with you (as an answer to What time do you get off (work) tonight?), where I'm never going out with you is clausal but fills a nominal slot. In DSAs, the speaker initially lures the hearer to create a positive expectation (e.g., I can go out with her), but the speaker 'dissociates' herself from this expectation, that is, expresses her negative attitude (e.g., irritation) towards it. DSAs have received little (if any) analytic attention, and this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I describe interpretive aspects of DSAs in comparison with the standard cases of syntactic amalgams (e.g., Ken sent you'll never guess how many letters to Naomi) and develop a cognitive–pragmatic account in relevance theory, explicating the interpretive path a hearer takes in comprehending a DSA utterance. • Identifying the Dissociative Syntactic Amalgam (DSA) construction. • Considering the ways in which a speaker conveys a variety of emotive meanings. • Presenting a theory-neutral description of interpretive aspects of DSAs. • Developing a cognitive–pragmatic account of DSAs in relevance theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnomethodology has been influential in many social science fields, including and especially applied linguistics, where conversation analysis is a major subfield for analyzing oral data. Nevertheless, ethnomethodology can also be—and has been—fruitfully applied to written discursive data, using its tools and methods to describe in detail how written texts are assembled and reflexively used, as members' methods, for doing and displaying social actions. This paper proposes an open analytical model to capture existing ethnomethodological analyses of written discourse and create a more transparent and replicable protocol for new analyses. I reconstruct ethnomethodology as set of assumptions and principles, review seminal research that used these principles to analyze written discourse, and present the master concept of "active text" that encapsulates them. I then construct a hierarchical prospective-retrospective model to formalize the methods used in ethnomethodology of written discourse. I use the model to reconstruct the analytical methods of two papers to show how it can be used for transparency and replication. The discussion section covers modelling in qualitative applied linguistics and ethnomethodology, and ends with some conclusions. • Ethnomethodology has a long relationship with discourse analysis, but focused on oral registers. • Ethnomethodology can be conceptualized a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and principles. • A formalized and open analytical model can be used to apply ethnomethodology to written discursive data. • A model can help make ethnomethodological analysis of discursive data easier to apply and more replicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the interactional dynamics of reusing and resisting metaphors of the body, illness and medical treatment in consultations between doctors and chronic pain patients in a pain clinic. Research has evidenced the general importance of metaphors in talk, and in health care settings specifically. Metaphors serve as a way of structuring our reasoning and understanding, including of illness experiences. This is particularly relevant in the case of chronic pain, as these patients are usually expert patients with particular assumptions on their illness, due to the chronic nature of their condition. However, we know less about how metaphors are taken up and potentially resisted in interaction. We study this by combining conceptual metaphor theory, MIPVU and interactional analysis. We found that metaphors are reused in many different ways, ranging from exact repetitions or very similar rewordings, to extensive metaphorical and literal elaborations, and are sometimes met with different forms of resistance. In our data, how metaphors are taken up is not tied to the metaphors' characteristics, but can mostly be explained by interactional dynamics, often specific to clinical consultations. This shows that not only which metaphors, but when and how they are used, matters when communicating with patients in health care contexts. • We have a good understanding of which metaphors are used in health care. • We know less about interactional reuse, development, and resistance to metaphors. • This paper combines metaphor and interaction analysis to study uptake of metaphors. • How metaphors are taken up is not specifically tied to metaphors' characteristics. • Rather, it relates to interactional dynamics, often specific to medical consultations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main tenets of Gricean pragmatics is the distinction between what is said and what is implicated; that is, between truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning. The main contribution of post-Gricean pragmatics was a new definition of what is said as a pragmatic and truth-conditional meaning (Carston, 2002; Recanati, 2010; Moeschler, 2018a). However, implicated meaning (mainly conversational implicature) is still defined as non-truth-conditional because it is cancellable without contradiction. The main consequence is that a speaker can deny having intended her implicature, which results in the hearer having no guarantee of the truthfulness of his inference. This paper explores the relationship between truth and pragmatic implicated meaning and posits that the assessment of a truth value of an inference is a crucial step in the comprehension process. To demonstrate this hypothesis, the paper develops a relevance-based approach to inference, which is coupled with Kahneman's dual cognitive system. I argue that the triggering of an inference is an intuitive and automatic process controlled by System 1, whereas its assessment as a true or false assumption is controlled by System 2. In other words, System 2 is responsible for what is defined in relevance theory as epistemic vigilance. • Explaining the dissociation of the inferential process from the assignment of a truth value to the inferred conclusion. • Assigning the inferential task to Kahneman's System 1, and the task of determining truth value to his System 2. • Fake news is assigned the truth value 'true' because it is compatible with the common ground. • The detection of fake news requires the intervention of System 2, which compares the proposition with the common ground. • Debunking fake news is only possible if an alternative common ground is accessible to the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forms the introductory article to the special issue 'Expressing Evidence'. It lays out the background into the pragmatic and semantic research on evidence in language, and positions the collection of papers within this theoretical landscape. The collection stands out in its focus on conceptual issues involved, including the relation between 'grammatical' evidentiality and other constructions that signal evidence and the consequences of these connections for the semantic and pragmatic theory. The special issue aims to bring the work on evidentiality to the attention of a broad audience, including not only linguists, but also language scientists more generally, as well as philosophers of language and science. • Evidential restrictions come in many forms in the grammar. • Studying the relation between evidentials and other evidence signals raises important questions. • It is important to place evidentiality within pragmatics, philosophy of language and epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the use of honorification for inanimate subjects in Korean, a linguistic phenomenon that, although traditionally ungrammatical, has been increasingly used in recent years. Despite negative perceptions and deliberate national campaigns to discourage it, its continued use requires a systematic investigation. Thus, to explore its social and linguistic functions, we conducted a questionnaire and a self-paced reading experiment. The questionnaire results suggest that native Korean speakers are well aware of the grammatical irregularity of such expressions. Nonetheless, these expressions are rated more positively only in the presence of an honorifiable addressee, indicating speakers' sensitivity to the social nuances of inanimate honorification within interpersonal relations. The self-paced reading experiment further suggests that this sensitivity is particularly pronounced during real-time language processing, as no processing difficulty was observed for sentences with inanimate honorification when the addressee was honorifiable. The findings indicate that the contemporary use of inanimate honorification in Korean likely serves as a politeness strategy, where speakers intentionally deviate from grammatical norms to convey respect and garner positive evaluation from their interlocutors. • We examined the perception and processing of inanimate honorification in Korean. • Inanimate honorification was rated to be highly unnatural in a questionnaire study. • Yet, the ratings significantly improved when the addressee was honorifiable. • The effect of honorifiable addressee was stronger during online sentence processing. • A politeness strategy could lead to intentional violation of grammaticality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore in detail the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of two understudied discourse markers of Upper Austrian German: ma indicates surprise, while geh indicates a discrepancy between speaker and addressee. In terms of their context of use, these discourse markers, which are restricted to turn-initial position are — at first sight — similar to the sentence-internal discourse particles leicht and doch. It is shown that these four markers display systematic similarities and differences, which invites the conclusion that their distribution is regulated by grammatical knowledge. An analysis in terms of Wiltschko's (2021) Interactional Spine Hypothesis is developed according to which ma and geh are interactional pro-forms (ProGroundP) which mark a reaction to the speaker's or the addressee's current epistemic state, respectively. In contrast, leicht and doch are analysed as (covertly) associating with the head of the grounding phrases thereby indicating whether or not the propositional content is in the interlocutor's ground. • Introduces new generalizations regarding some discourse markers in Austrian German. • Develops syntactic analysis that captures distribution, interpretation, and context of use of these discourse markers. • Supports the framework of the interactional spine hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of surprise frames in judicial opinions of the HKSAR. Specifically, it examines the semantic variation of surprise frames and the discourse purposes for which they are used. In doing so, it explores the underlying interactivity of surprise frames by distinguishing between performative expressions of surprise (those that emanate from the current author's reflection) and descriptive expressions (those that report on another's sense of surprise). Recognising that legal discourse scholars often neglect lower courts, the paper contrasts opinions from three levels of court in the HKSAR. Genre and court-specific patterns emerge: a key similarity is that all three courts, performatively and descriptively, most often use the TYPICALITY frame. Key differences include a significantly greater use of the TYPICALITY frame by the appeal courts in relation to the trial courts; more qualitatively oriented analysis shows that the use of surprise frames maps onto the common law standard of review, i.e., the appeal courts largely use surprise frames to focus on legal issues. In contrast, the trial courts focus on facts and evidence. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the main findings for researchers and professionals. • Surprise frames in the majority opinions of 119 HKSAR court cases analysed. • Three levels of court are analysed. • A distinction is made between performative and descriptive frames. • All courts used the TYPICALITY frame most frequently. • Appeal courts focus on legal issues, trial courts on facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists are under increasing pressure to enhance public awareness of the societal implications of their research. This involves recontextualizing highly specialized knowledge into forms accessible to diverse audiences, varying in levels of expertise. While much research has focused on the reformulation of ideas for popularizing purposes, less emphasis has been placed on the pragmatic strategies involved in adapting expert knowledge for varied audiences in digital contexts. A pragmatic approach that leverages both verbal communication and digital tools could provide insights into these dissemination strategies. This study examines how digital research digests, which are concise versions of research articles, make scientific research accessible to non-experts. The study identifies two key sets of strategies: expert-oriented, which emphasize authority and credibility, and audience-oriented, which simplify complex ideas and relate them to everyday life. These strategies blend to form a unique narrative voice that balances authority with accessibility. The paper argues that effective digital dissemination should integrate both linguistic and pragmatic methods to successfully communicate complex information across different digital practices. • Pragmatic strategies help bridge knowledge asymmetries in digital scientific communication. • Expert-oriented strategies highlight credibility and research significance. • Audience-oriented strategies ensure comprehension and engagement. • Interaction of pragmatic strategies with metadiscourse enhances science communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares three types of embedded root clause (verb second in complement clauses, embedded imperatives and embedded inverted interrogatives) in German and English. It will describe in detail how these constructions differ from their non-root counterparts syntactically and pragmatically, and how equivalent constructions in German and English differ from each other. I will then use Farkas's (2022) version of the Table model to formalise how the pragmatic characteristics of these constructions falls out from a mixture of the generations of a conventional implicature and language-specific rules on how perspectives may shift under attitude predicates. • The distribution of embedded root clauses in English and German is determined by language-specific pragmatic rules. • Embedded attitudes in German shift in terms of speaker perspective, but not addressee perspective. • As a result, German has no embedded inverted interrogatives despite having the requisite syntax for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper deals with the division of pragmatic labor between two types of wh -interrogatives in Marzahn German (MG). Use of the first type, marked by the enclitic particle n ([ n - int ]), is near obligatory for and confined to canonical, i.e., information-seeking question acts. The second type, lacking n ([∅- int ]), has to be employed in non-canonical questions, such as rhetorical ones. This pattern of apparent markedness-reversal challenges the pretense-based approach to exam questions by Plunze and Zimmermann (2006) (Section 2) and plausibilizes an approach to information-seeking questions in terms of social cost in the sense of Levinson (2012) (Section 3.1). Overall empirical evidence, however, favors an account of n -marking as reinforcement of question act defaults in line with Farkas (2022) (Section 3.2). Section 5 offers a formulation of reinforcement in terms of the "table model" of discourse (Farkas 2022), such that the peculiar status of MG [ n - int ] follows from the prohibition of contextually overriding "basic conventional discourse effects". In the course of the above discussion, we will scrutinize different notions of interrogative sentential force (Sections 1, 2, 5), illustrate the form and workings of several types of non-canonical questions (guess, rhetorical, echo etc.), and analyze question use in the light of institutional settings and interpersonal effects (3.3). • Division of pragmatic labor for [± n ]-marked wh -interrogatives in Marzahn German. • Particle n reserved for information-seeking questions. • Reinforcement of question act defaults with advantages over recording social costs. • Ban on contextual overrides as the special conventional discourse effect of n. • Evidence from exam questions against pretense-based approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers sharing the same language have been found to use this language in systematically different ways. Language-internal pragmatic variation can be observed across nations, regions, and social groups, correlating with such demographic factors as ethnicity, gender, and age. Yet, while there is a huge body of work examining pragmatic differences between languages, the study of pragmatic differences within languages is, by contrast, relatively recent and still developing. Much early work in this area has been carried out on a handful of speech acts in some national varieties of, notably, Spanish and English, by employing experimental methods such as discourse completion tasks and role plays. Since then, varieties of lesser studied Indo-European languages as well as of non-Indo-European languages have been considered, including post-colonial varieties, and there is a wide range of further novelties concerning in particular procedures of data gathering and the pragmatic features investigated, thus broadening the scope of the analysis. The aim of this article collection is to showcase the diversity in this growing subfield of pragmatics, while this introductory article provides an overview of the topics, methods, and findings in the papers included in this collection, with a view to encouraging more research into pragmatic variation within languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the discourse particle vallë in Albanian. It provides the first in-depth description of the distribution and functional meaning of vallë. I argue that vallë is restricted to speech acts containing questions as opposed to assertions. The meaning of vallë is expressive in nature since it contributes to the non-at-issue content of the utterance and expresses speaker's attitude of wondering towards the truth of the proposition. I provide an analysis in terms of Traugott's subjectification approach, according to which vallë expresses the speaker's epistemic stance. • Albanian particle vallë expresses an attitude of wondering or feeling of uncertainty. • Albanian particle vallë is restricted to speech-acts containing questions. • Albanian particle vallë is expressive in nature since it only contributes to the non-at-issue content of the utterance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]