Evidentiality, Modality and Speaker’s Stance as Register Features in Galen’s Medical Discourse (B07#)

• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416591334

This project investigates medical registers of Galen of Pergamum (AD 129–216) utilizing formal and functional variation within the domains of evidentiality and epistemic modality, as well as the role of both within the higher-order category of stance-taking, as a possible basis for their categorization. Based on a macro-modeling of medical discourse as a communicative domain in imperial Greece, we determine contextual parameters that potentially interact with these linguistic features. Established text genres serve as a starting point for approaching variation in Galen but are not suitable as a structuring paradigm of these technical texts. They will thus be contrasted with the potential registers in order to reconceptualize the system of textual categorization.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1412: Register: Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation
• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Theresa Roth