Linguistic Analysis of Fighters’ Epistemic Predictions

Ahmad Idris Asmaradhani

Abstract


Predicting is an effort that positions the speaker’s perception under question where the forthcoming event is something that cannot be readily seen and is therefore immeasurable in terms of daily ordinary interactions. That is the kind of assertive predictions made by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters when asked about who the winner of the upcoming lightweight title bout between Conor McGregor and Khabib Normagomedov. Applying epistemic method and drawing the theory of the four sources of knowledge by Dudovskiy (2019) this present study was intended to analyze the assertive statements—as the answers to the interviewer’s question—in predicting the winner of the fight which led to disclose the predictors’ knowledge and beliefs about who the forthcoming winner of the bout was. Measured in terms of epistemic prediction involving the theory of conditional sentences it was proven that most of the fighters’ assertive statements invoked either deductive or inductive reasoning based on their evaluation on the two contenders which also implied the predictors’ levels of convincement. It was also found that among twelve fighters, four fighters made deductive predictions convincingly; one fighter made deductive prediction unconvincingly; three fighters made inductive predictions convincingly; and four fighters made inductive predictions unconvincingly

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30870/aiselt.v4i4.11039

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