RELIABILITY MARKERS AS MEANS OF EXPRESSING EPISTEMIC MODALITY IN THE ECONOMIC NEWS DISCOURSE OF CHINESE ONLINE MEDIA

Zhang Qi

The article investigates reliability markers as means of expressing epistemic modality in the economic news discourse of Chinese online media. Drawing on economic texts from the online version of “People’s Daily” (人民日报), the study examines grammatical, lexical, and syntactic means of expressing epistemic modality through the analysis of modal verbs and constructions, modal adverbs, and syntactic devices for conveying information reliability. The research reveals the functional specialization of modal means depending on the nature of economic information and the pragmatic purposes of the text. The findings demonstrate that the choice of reliability markers is determined by the institutional requirements of official media discourse and the specifics of economic information presentation. The results contribute to the study of epistemic modality expression in media discourse and can be applied in comparative studies of reliability markers across different languages.

Keywords:epistemic modality, reliability markers, economic discourse, Chinese online media, online news, modal verbs, modal constructions, modal adverbs, syntactic means of reliability, media linguistics, People’s Daily