Epistemic modality in Walt Whitman's when the lilacs last in the dooryard Bloom'd

Abstract EN

The current study investigates epistemic modality as a linguistic phenomenon in Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Blomm'd.

It is the first of the collection of four elegies poems entitled Memories of President Lincoln appeared in Walt Whitman's masterpiece Leaves of Grass in which he commiserates the president Lincoln after his death in 1865.

This poem falls in sixteen stanzas of two hundreds and six lines.

It is investigated in terms of Thomas Willett's (1988) taxonomy of epistemic modality and evidentiality in which he proposes that epistemic modality involves evidentiality.

The study shows how a certain source of evidence in terms of certain type of conceived truthfulness affects the degree of assertion of the epistemic coding of the interlocurers.