Linguistic Devices of Expressing Doubt in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”
Linguistic Devices of Expressing Doubt in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”

Summary/Abstract: Whether viewed from a general and somehow vague standpoint as meaning lack of certainty or integrated within a more complex system presupposing gradability and subjectivity, the concept of doubt remains basic for the domain of epistemicmodality. The various linguistic devices of expressing doubt, be they lexical, morphological, syntactic or pragmatic, instantiate communicative strategies specific to contemporary English. Considering this general level as a starting point, we performed an analysis of T. Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” to highlight the role of semantic and pragmaticfactors (frequency, connotations, contextualization) in interpreting the linguistic devices expressing doubt as markers of the psychological profile of an individual or social group.

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