210 Discourse Studies 2015, Vol. 17 (2): 210 –225 DOI: 10.1177/1461445614564523 Corresponding author: Juana I Marín Arrese, Departamento de Filología Inglesa I, Facultad de Filología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, s/n, Madrid 28040, Spain. Email: juana@filol.ucm.es Epistemicity and Stance: A cross-linguistic study of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish Juana I. Marín Arrese Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Abstract This paper explores the use of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish. The linguistic resources of epistemic stance include evidential and modal expressions, as well as verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity (Boye 2012; Marín-Arrese 2013). This paper examines the pattern of distribution of epistemic stance expressions in three types of journalistic genres in English and Spanish, and the presence of multifunctionality of some evidential expressions in the two languages. The paper aims to reveal possible similarities or differences in the use of the stance resources in the various genres and across languages. Keywords: stance, epistemicity, evidentiality, epistemic modality, journalistic discourse 1. Introduction Studies on epistemic stance primarily concern the role of beliefs, knowledge and evidence in the expression of epistemic support or evidentiary justification for a statement or claim (Boye 2012). From an interactional perspective, the use of epistemic stance expressions reflects the stance or positioning of the speaker with respect to their assertions and their commitment to the validity of the proposition (Biber et al. 1999; Marín-Arrese 2009, 2011b). Stance expressions are also indexical of