109Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
Oleksandr Kapranov UDK 551.583:81'42
English Department, NLA University College DOI: 10.4312/vestnik.16.109-129
Norway Izvirni znanstveni članek
oleksandr.kapranov@nla.no
EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING 
CHARLES III
1 INTRODUCTION
The issue of climate change is both urgent and complex (Gardiner, 2024; Yasmin, 
2024). In light of its critical importance to the existence of humanity and the wider 
survival of life on the planet, climate change-related topics are routinely addressed by 
a multitude of actors, including politicians, celebrities, and royalty (Wetts, 2023). As 
far as British royal figures are concerned, King Charles III is known as a passionate ad-
vocate of climate change mitigation (Kapranov, 2024a), whose opinions and speeches 
on the issue of the climate seem to resonate within both political and societal circles in 
the United Kingdom (UK) and far beyond its borders (Marshall, 2011). Typically, King 
Charles III’s public speeches and written communication on climate change appear to 
be supported by science-based evidence (Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013). In this regard, 
it should be noted that the issue of climate change in political discourse in the UK is 
usually regarded through the lens of scientific evidence (Sébastien et al., 2014; Strass-
heim & Kettunen, 2014), which involves objective and specialized knowledge (Russo, 
2019). In contrast, however, a number of British mass media actors portray the issue of 
climate change through an impressionistic prism that verges either on the apocalyptic 
imagery of “doom-and-gloom” or a denial of the reality of climate change (Morgan & 
Di Giulio, 2018; Rae, 2021; Weik von Mossner, 2021). 
Given that climate change-related discourse by the mainstream political parties in 
the UK is based on scientific evidence (Levidow & Papaioannou, 2015), it is, perhaps, 
not surprising that climate change discourse by King Charles III (hereinafter – the 
King) appears to be informed by evidence (Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013). Presently, 
however, there seems to be insufficient research on how such evidence is manifested 
linguistically and discursively in the King’s speeches on climate change (Kapranov, 
2024a). Seeking to fill the current gap in scholarship, the article presents a mixed-meth-
ods study that aims to learn about evidentiality associated with climate change in a 
corpus of the King’s speeches on the topic of climate change that are available on 
110 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
the official site of the British Royal Family, www.royal.uk. The corpus is investigated 
within the scope of the linguistic notion of evidentiality. It should be borne in mind that 
in linguistics and discourse studies evidentiality is regarded as the linguistic marking of 
evidence (Bednarek, 2006: 635). While we will dwell upon the notion of evidentiality 
further in the article, let us observe for now that evidentiality in linguistics is assumed 
to express “the kinds of evidence a person has for making factual claims” (Anderson, 
1986: 273).
In light of the aforementioned view of evidentiality, this study sets out to answer the 
following research question (RQ):
RQ: What are the manifestations of evidentiality in the corpus of the King’s 
speeches on the issue of climate change?
Guided by the RQ, the article is structured as follows. First, the theoretical premises 
associated with evidentiality are provided in section 2. Second, a review of the literature 
on climate change in political discourse in the UK is given in section 3. Thereafter, in 
section 4, the present study is introduced and discussed. Finally, the summary of the find-
ings, the limitations of the study, and possible directions associated with future research 
are outlined in section 5. 
2  EVIDENTIALITY: THEORETICAL PREMISES 
The theoretical premises of the study are grounded in an approach to evidentiality that 
regards it as the information source behind a message and how the source is marked lin-
guistically (Anderson, 1986; Carretero & Zamorano-Mansilla, 2015). Put differently, 
evidentiality may be argued to involve the source-based verification and authentication 
of statements and/or claims that are used by an interlocuter (Anderson, 1986). Eviden-
tiality as a category in its own right is manifested in some languages (e.g. Finnish) by 
the grammatically obligatory markers (Aikhenvald, 2007: 209), typically represented 
by evidential morphemes (Mushin, 2001). It is posited in the literature that evidential 
markers point out to the nature of the information source in a proposition (Aikhenvald, 
2007; Kaiser, 2024). In this regard, Kaiser (2024: 1) argues that evidential markers typ-
ically “indicate whether the proposition refers to something that the speaker saw, heard 
about from someone else, or inferred from other information”. Additionally, evidential 
markers may convey the speaker’s level of commitment to the proposition, given that 
information sources range in reliability from first-hand evidence to reported hearsay 
(Kaiser, 2024: 2).
111Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
English, however, lacks explicit morphosyntactic evidential markers, which are also 
referred to as evidentials (Brugman & Macaulay, 2015), that “indicate both source and 
reliability of the information” (Rooryck, 2001: 125). As previously mentioned, English 
does not have obligatory evidentials that mark the source of evidence morphosyntactical-
ly (Brugman & Macaulay, 2015: 202). However, it possesses a range of lexical, semantic, 
and pragmatic means that may refer to the information source, in particular, lexical verbs 
that are associated with claims, opinions, and reports (Aikhenvald, 2007). In other words, 
the literature argues that English, in which evidentiality is non-grammaticized (Papafra-
gou, 2000), may develop an evidential dimension by using, predominantly, lexical and 
semantic forms (Aikhenvald, 2007) in a variety of pragmatic contexts (Ifantidou, 2001; 
Nuyts, 2006; Oleniak, 2020). Aikhenvald’s (2004) contention is encapsulated in Table 1, 
which summarizes her classification of the evidential dimension expressed by semantic 
means.
Table 1: Aikhenvald’s (2004) Classification of Evidentiality Based upon Semantic Means
# Category Explanation
1 Assumption Evidence that is based upon logical reasoning, assumption, or general knowledge
2 Hearsay Evidence that is based upon reported information with no reference to those it was reported by
3 Inference Evidence that is based on visible or tangible evidence, or results
4 Non-visual sensory Evidence that is based upon information acquired via hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching
5 Quotative Evidence that is based on reported information with an overt reference to the quoted source
6 Visual Evidence that is based upon information acquired through seeing
While Aikhenvald’s (2004) classification of evidentiality is argued to be applicable 
to most languages, including English, Rooryck (2001: 127-128) demonstrates that Eng-
lish, in particular, makes an extensive use of parenthetical constructions in order to man-
ifest evidentiality. Rooryck’s (2001) view of parenthetical constructions as evidentials in 
English is summarized in Table 2, below.  
112 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Table 2: The Use of Parenthetical Constructions as Evidentials in  
English According to Rooryck (2001)
# Category Example
1 Nonvisual sensorial Jules is back, I feel/I sense
2
Sensory inferential, 
visual deduction
Jules is back, I see
3 Hearsay Jules is back, I hear/they say
4 Quotative Sarah said, …
5 Inferential I realize/I found out …; it turns out, …
6
C i r c u m s t a n t i a l , 
unspecified source 
It seems/it appears, …
7 Speculative I believe/think/suppose/presume/guess/ suspect/assume/, …
8 Surprisal I’m afraid/I’m sorry, …
It follows from Table 2 that Rooryck’s (2001) approach to evidentiality is indicative 
of the contention concerning the relation – or rather, interrelation – between evidentiality 
on the one hand, and epistemic and evaluative marking (e.g. I’m afraid) on the other. It 
should be observed that similar views are found in Bednarek (2006), who argues that 
epistemic marking and, in particular, epistemological positioning, often overlap with 
evidentiality. In this regard, Bednarek (2006: 635) specifies that epistemological posi-
tioning “deals with questions such as ‘Who is the source of information?’, ‘What is the 
basis of someone’s (the writer’s or a third party’s) knowledge?’, ‘How certain is their 
knowledge?”. 
It is inferred from Bednarek’s (2006) view of evidentiality in English that, in addi-
tion to the aforementioned semantic dimension, evidentiality in English may be manifest-
ed by discursive means. These are said to consist of pointing to the source of evidence 
in the text, with the sourcing based upon one of the following: (i) perception, (ii) general 
knowledge, (iii) proof, (iv) obviousness, (v) unspecified, (vi) hearsay, and (vii) mindsay 
(Bednarek, 2006). Similarly to Bednarek (2006), González, Roseano, Borràs-Comes, and 
Prieto (2017) argue that evidentiality may be marked in discursive contexts in the manner 
that is outlined in Table 3. 
113Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
Table 3: Evidentiality Marking in Discursive Context According to González et al. (2017)
# Types of Evidentiality Marking Discursive Characteristics
1 Direct Personal access to information;Speaker’s personal involvement
2 Indirect/mediated
Non-personal access to information via science-mediated, 
tradition-mediated, common knowledge-mediated, and 
reported sources;
Speaker’s non-personal involvement;
Mediated knowledge coming from third parties (science, 
tradition, common knowledge, etc.)
Concluding the present outline of the literature on evidentiality, it could be posited 
that there is a growing body of studies that deal with evidentiality in English, which, 
as already mentioned, does not have obligatory morphosyntactic evidentials. Given the 
absence of morphosyntactically marked evidentiality in English, one of the current direc-
tions in researching evidentiality consists of exploring its discursive functions in various 
forms of discourse. Presently, however, there are no state-of-the-art linguistic investiga-
tions that focus on evidentiality in English-medium climate change discourse. The study 
which is further presented and discussed in this article is thus one of the initial attempts 
to shed light on this under-researched topic. Prior to proceeding to the study, however, let 
us briefly review the literature on climate change discourse in the UK.
3  CLIMATE CHANGE IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE UK:   
 LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature generally indicates that scientific evidence concerning the issue of climate 
change is crucial in policymaking (Demeritt, 2006; Fløttum & Dahl, 2011; Pieczka & 
Escobar, 2013). The British political tradition, in particular, is characterized by a ro-
bust involvement of science in policymaking that concerns climate change (Shackley 
& Wynne, 1995). Specifically, the literature demonstrates that scientific evidence-based 
policymaking was adopted in the UK in 1999 in the Modernising Government White 
Paper (Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014: 261). Furthermore, the literature posits that British 
policymaking culture and its respective discourse are essentially evidence-based (Sébas-
tien et al., 2014). In this light, the present review seeks to summarize the literature that, 
at least, mentions evidence (for instance, science-based) in political discourse on climate 
change in the UK. 
While evidence-based policymaking has been a much-debated concept in the 
UK (Levidow & Papaioannou, 2015), the major British political parties have availed 
114 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
themselves of scientific findings reported by the British climate change advisory bodies 
(Averchenkova et al., 2021). In this regard, the literature suggests that scientific evidence, 
which is provided by external experts in the field, facilitates the legitimization of the UK 
governments’ policy framework concerning the measures of climate change mitigation 
(Levidow & Papaioannou, 2015). Furthermore, the literature posits that British politi-
cal parties seem to take into consideration expert advice on the issue of climate change 
and incorporate it into their respective climate change discourse, thus contributing to 
evidence-based policymaking (Averchenkova et al., 2021: 1218), which is reflective of 
regulatory practices, policy assessments, and stakeholder involvement (Strassheim & 
Kettunen, 2014).
As far as policymaking associated with climate change is concerned, the major po-
litical parties in the UK share a common view that the issue of climate change poses a 
serious threat both locally, in the UK, and worldwide (Kapranov, 2015a). To illustrate 
the point, climate change discourse by both the Conservate and Labour governments in-
volves science-based evidence that points to the immense scope of the issue (Kapranov, 
2018a). It is, then, not surprising that both Conservative and Labour prime ministers refer 
to the issue of climate change through the discursive lens of battle and war, and allude to 
the gargantuan challenge which it poses (Kapranov, 2017). 
Another typical aspect of British policymaking concerning the issue of climate 
change involves the bipartisan (i.e. Conservative and Labour) discourse that construes 
climate change in economic terms (Kapranov, 2018b). Specifically, the bipartisan climate 
change discourse in the UK seems to be informed by evidence garnered by governmental 
and corporate actors, who point out the costs associated with climate change mitigation 
and amelioration, such as CO2 emission reductions (Kapranov, 2015a). In this regard, 
the former British prime minister Rishi Sunak highlighted the way the British economy 
responds to the issue of climate change as a challenge to economic prosperity (Kapranov, 
2024b). Judging from the literature, it can be argued that an extensive reliance on sci-
ence-based evidence associated with climate change has contributed to the economiza-
tion of the issue in British politics, which, in its turn, is reflected in the current political 
discourse on climate change in the UK (Von Malmborg & Strachan, 2005).
It should be noted that while the scientific approach to climate change constitutes 
a typical feature of the British mainstream political discourse, the right-wing as well as 
the extreme left-wing political parties in the UK do not seem to involve science-based 
evidence in their respective discourse on climate change (Lockwood, 2018). In particular, 
the British far-right parties ignore science-based evidence in their communication with 
the public. Moreover, their climate change discourse is characterized by an ethno-nation-
alist and authoritarian perspective that seems sceptical towards climate change (Forcht-
ner, 2019; Kapranov, 2023).
Summarizing the outline of the literature, it can be argued that climate change in the 
British mainstream political discourse is predominantly informed by scientific evidence. 
115Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
However, little is known about climate change discourse by the King as far as evidence 
and evidentiality are concerned. In the subsequent section of the article I thus present a 
study that aims to learn about evidentiality in the corpus of the King’s speeches on cli-
mate change.  
4  THE PRESENT STUDY: ITS RESEARCH QUESTIONS, CORPUS, AND 
 METHODOLOGY
The present study, as mentioned above, seeks to illuminate how evidentiality is mani-
fested in the corpus of speeches on the issue of climate change delivered by the King. 
In line with Kaiser (2024) and Aikhenvald (2004), evidentiality in this study is regarded 
as a category that signals the information source, in other words, “whether a speaker has 
direct evidence for something, heard it from someone, or inferred it” (Kaiser, 2022: 2). 
Informed by the seminal publications by Aikhenvald (2004) and Kaiser (2024), eviden-
tiality is applied to the King’s speeches on climate change in order to learn about the 
categories of evidentiality associated with this issue. Following this reasoning, the RQ 
was formulated and outlined in the introductory part of the article. Hopefully, providing 
answers to the RQ will facilitate our understanding of the King’s discursive strategy of 
deploying evidence associated with climate change in the corpus of his speeches.
In line with the RQ, specific attention in the study is paid to the construal of sourc-
ing as the cornerstone of evidentiality. As far as the definition of sourcing is concerned, 
I follow Bednarek (2006), who regards it as a construal that provides an answer to the 
query “To what/whom can this be attributed?”, so that the basis of knowledge becomes 
clear due to the reference to, for instance, perception, assumption, and so forth. Acknowl-
edging a possible overlap between evidentiality and epistemological positioning as pos-
tulated by Bednarek (2006) and Mushin (2001), the study does not attempt to illuminate 
the King’s attitudes towards the sources of knowledge and evidence concerning climate 
change, since such an endeavour merits a separate investigation. Hence, the overlap be-
tween epistemological positioning (i.e. the King’s attitude towards knowledge about cli-
mate change) and evidentiality is not pursued in the present investigation. 
The corpus of the study involved the King’s speeches on climate change available 
on the official website of the British Royal Family, www.royal.uk. In line with the pri-
or studies (Kapranov, 2015b, 2017, 2018b, 2021, 2024b), the website was searched by 
means of applying the following keywords associated with the issue of climate change: 
anthropogenic climate change, climate change, climate change mitigation, extreme 
weather, extreme drought, extreme flooding, global warming, greenhouse gasses, and 
CO2 emissions. The search returned 20 speeches on climate change delivered by the King 
within the timeframe from 2005 to 2023 (see Primary Sources for the links to the speech-
es). The official transcripts of his speeches on climate change were downloaded from 
116 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
www.royal.uk, saved as Word files, and analysed in the Statistical Package for Social 
Sciences (SPSS), version 20.0 (IBM 2011) in order to compute the descriptive statistics 
that involved the total number of words = 36,272; mean words = 1,813.6; and standard 
deviation of words = 842.1.
In terms of the methodology, the analysis involved the following steps. Firstly, I con-
ducted the qualitative part of the analysis in line with Bednarek (2006). It was text-driven 
and was executed manually without attempts to categorize the sources on an a priori 
basis. In other words, I searched the corpus of the King’s speeches for the instances that 
manifested evidentiality, i.e. discursive passages, clauses, phrases, and lexical items that 
pointed to the source of information. Secondly, the identified sources of evidentiality 
were analysed for their possible fits with the semantic categories of evidentiality, which 
were proposed and developed by Aikhelvald (2004), namely (i) assumption (based upon 
logical reasoning, assumptions, and general knowledge); (ii) hearsay (based upon report-
ed information with no reference to those it was reported by); (iii) inference (based on 
visible or tangible evidence or results); (iv) non-visual sensory (based upon information 
acquired via hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching); (v) quotative (based on reported 
information with an overt reference to the quoted source); and (vi) visual (based upon 
information acquired through seeing). The choice of Aikhenvald’s (2004) typology was 
motivated by its universal applicability to the languages with and without obligatory 
morphosyntactic markers of evidentiality. Thirdly, once the categories of evidentiality 
associated with climate change were classified in accordance with this typology, they 
were turned into numerical representations and processed in SPSS (IBM, 2010) in order 
to calculate the ratio (as a percentage) of each individual category to the total number of 
occurrences of evidentiality in the corpus. 
It should be specified that I only analysed the cases of evidentiality associated with 
the issue of climate change. To illustrate the point, the following two sentences should 
be considered:
(a) Princess Anne reckons that climate change is getting worse as we speak.
(b) Princess Anne reckons that Kate Middleton is visiting her aunt in Cheshire. 
Both (a) and (b) could be argued to involve instances of evidentiality with the clearly 
marked source of evidence and linguo-discursive means that refer to it. However, only 
sentences similar to (a) were analysed in the study owing to their propositional content, 
which was related to the topic of climate change, while sentences similar to (b) were 
excluded from the analysis. Importantly, it should be noted that in the analysis sentences 
similar to (a) were analysed on the clausal level rather than on the lexical or phrasal lev-
el. The decision to limit the analysis to the clausal level was in line with González et al. 
(2017), who pointed to the clausal and supraclausal levels (i.e. paragraph) as an optimal 
solution for the analysis of evidentiality in discursive environments in those languages 
117Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
that lack obligatory morphosyntactic marking of evidentiality. The results of the analyses 
are further presented in section 4.1 of the article.     
4.1  Results and discussion
The quantitative analysis of the corpus has revealed that there are 208 instances of evi-
dentiality in total. This finding is expanded upon in Table 4, below.
Table 4: The Descriptive Statistics of the Instances of Evidentiality in the Corpus
# Descriptive Statistics Measure
1 The total number of the instances of evidentiality 208
2 Mean instances of evidentiality 10.4
3 Standard deviation instances of evidentiality 3.1
4 Maximum instances of evidentiality 15
6 Minimum instances of evidentiality 6
7 Range of instances of evidentiality 9
We can observe in Table 4 that the corpus is marked rather substantially by the 
instances of evidentiality, with the mean occurrence of evidentiality being 10.4 and the 
range being nine. Furthermore, we can see in Table 4 that the minimum occurrence of the 
instances of evidentiality in the corpus is six, which means that each individual speech 
in the corpus involves at least six instances of evidentiality. In other words, it is evident 
from the descriptive statistics summarized in Table 4 that each speech bears the mark 
of evidentiality. This finding is indicative of the King’s attention to evidence, which he 
incorporates in his speeches on climate change. The finding seems to be particularly 
relevant to the quite recent debate concerning the presence or, alternatively, absence of 
evidence in climate change discourse in the UK (Demeritt, 2006; Fløttum & Dahl, 2011; 
Morgan & Di Giulio, 2018; Russo, 2019; Weik von Mossner, 2021; Wetts, 2023). In 
particular, the present finding appears to lend indirect support to the literature, which 
indicates that climate change discourse by the reputable political and corporate actors in 
UK is, predominantly, evidence-based (Kapranov, 2015a; Russo, 2019; Weik von Moss-
ner, 2021; Wetts, 2023), with the King’s speeches on climate change being no exception. 
Furthermore, the presence of evidentiality in the corpus appears to corroborate the 
literature (Shackley & Wynne, 1995; Pieczka & Escobar, 2013; Sébastien et al., 2014; 
Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014; Levidow & Papaioannou, 2015; Averchenkova et al., 
2021), which indicates that evidence-based discourse on climate change is rather typi-
cal in the British political tradition. Even though the King is not a politician per se, the 
presence of evidentiality in his speeches on climate change is suggestive of a certain 
118 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
discursive convergence of his speeches on climate change and those of British political 
actors representing the major mainstream parties. Additionally, we may argue that the 
presence of evidentiality in the King’s speeches sets his climate change discourse apart 
from the climate change discourse by British right-wing and the extreme left-wing politi-
cal actors that, typically, lacks references to evidence, especially science-based evidence 
(Lockwood, 2018; Forchtner, 2019). 
 In addition to unpacking the quantitative dimension of evidentiality in the corpus, 
it seems pertinent to establish how evidentiality is manifested qualitatively in the King’s 
speeches on climate change. Guided by Aikhenvald’s (2004) categories of evidentiality, 
it has been discovered in the present study that evidentiality in the corpus is manifested 
by the following categories: assumption, hearsay, inference, non-visual sensory, quota-
tive, and visual. These findings are presented in Table 5, which provides the categories 
of evidentiality associated with climate change and the ratio (as a percentage) of an indi-
vidual category in relation to the total number of instances of evidentiality in the corpus. 
Table 5: The Categories of Evidentiality in the Corpus
# Categories of Evidentiality The Ratio of Category of Evidentiality 
1 Assumption 25.0 %
2 Hearsay  5.8 %
3 Inference 13.9 %
4 Non-visual sensory 7.2 %
5 Quotative 36.5 %
6 Visual 11.5 %
Let us discuss the categories of evidentiality associated with climate change in the 
corpus (see Table 5) in more detail. It follows from Table 5 that quotative is the most 
frequent category of evidentiality in the corpus (36.5%), which is followed by assump-
tion (25.0%), and inference (13.9%). The least utilized categories are visual (11.5%), 
non-visual sensory (7.2%), and hearsay (5.8%). We thus continue our discussion by 
focussing on the quotative and assumption categories, given that they seem to be dom-
inant in the corpus.
Given that quotative is the most frequent category of evidentiality in the corpus, we 
may contend that the King relies substantially on outside sources, which he then incor-
porates in the discursive fabrics of his speeches on the issue of climate change. The King 
also quotes himself as the source of evidence, i.e. he employs self-quotations. While we 
will return to the King’s self-quotations later in the discussion, let us illustrate the quota-
tive category of evidentiality associated with climate change with an excerpt taken from 
one of his speeches delivered in 2015: 
119Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
(1) Through extreme weather events, it is already causing ecosystem collapse, 
loss of habitation, poverty, starvation, migration and conflict.  Some five years 
ago, the Lancet’s Commission on Climate Change described it as ‘The greatest 
threat to human health of the 21st Century’ and this warning has been echoed 
worldwide by the American Medical Association, Academy of Paediatrics, 
College of Preventative Medicine and Public Health Association, the Australi-
an Medical Association, the World Federation of Public Health Organizations 
and the World Health Organization. (A speech at a meeting about “Putting 
Health at the Centre of the Climate Change Debate: The Role of the Health 
Community in the Run Up to COP21” at the Royal Society in London on 
25.02.2015)
In (1), the King uses the so-called direct type of quoting by citing “The greatest 
threat to human health of the 21st Century”, which refers to climate change. He mentions 
the source of evidence, i.e. the Lancet Commission on Climate Change, and employs the 
reporting verb “describe” in the simple past tense in order to link the quote to the rest 
of the clause. It should be specified that the source of evidence is the annual report by 
the Lancet Commission on Climate Change, which is published by a reputable scientific 
panel of experts (Watts et al., 2017).
While most instances of evidentiality in the corpus are similar to (1) in the sense that 
they involve direct citations and, less often, indirect quotations with the explicit reference 
to the source, there are a number of self-quotations in the corpus such as, for example, 
“However, I said when I was in Brazil just two months ago that we had 100 months left in 
which to take the necessary action” (a speech at the Third May Day Business Summit on 
Climate Change in London on 1.05.2009). The occurrences of self-quotations are not nu-
merous in the corpus, but presumably the King takes the liberty of quoting himself from 
time to time owing to his active involvement in the process of climate change mitigation, 
and his personal interest in the issue (Kapranov, 2024a). Given that the King has been 
delivering speeches on climate change since the early 1990s, when he was still the Prince 
of Wales, we may posit that he could be considered a person who is quite knowledgeable 
about the issue. In addition, the King presides over several foundations that carry out 
climate change-related activities. His self-quotations on the issue of climate change thus 
seem to be well-grounded in his personal involvement in the matter.  
As Table 5 further reveals, the second most frequent category is assumption. It 
should perhaps be mentioned that the title of this category appears to be quite fuzzy, 
given that Aikhenvald (2004) regards it as the category of evidentiality whose evidence 
is based upon (i) logical reasoning, (ii) assumption, and/or (iii) general knowledge. In 
the corpus, the latter two aspects of the category seem to be used the most, namely as-
sumption and general knowledge, respectively. An example of assumption is provided 
by excerpt (2): 
120 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
(2) Taking action to address an issue like climate change – largely invisible, 
somewhat nebulous, still rather unpredictable in its precise consequences, is 
not an easy decision, I know. And I suspect there are quite a few sceptics here 
still. (A speech at the Celtic Nations Business Summit on Climate Change in 
Cardiff on 7.11.2007)
In (2), the proposition, which indicates that there are climate change sceptics who 
claim that the issue of climate change is “largely invisible, somewhat nebulous, still 
rather unpredictable in its precise consequences”, has its source of evidence in the com-
ment clause “I suspect”. We may argue that the comment clause “I suspect” denotes an 
assumption rather than states factual knowledge. To reiterate, assumption appears very 
often as the category of evidence in the corpus. Its frequent occurrence may represent a 
discursive strategy on the part of the King to be perceived as a person who can conjure, 
reason, and draw inferences. Presumably, this strategy is meant to counterbalance the 
quotative category of evidentiality, which dominates the corpus. Arguably, it is not the 
King’s intention to be perceived by his audience as overbearing with quotations and 
references to scientific sources. It is likely that in order to facilitate an impression of 
being close to the audience he utilizes assumption as a manifestation of being on a par 
with his interlocutors.  
The aforementioned contention seems to be reinforced by the finding that general 
knowledge as an aspect of assumption occurs quite frequently in the corpus. This is fur-
ther illustrated by excerpt (3): 
(3) BT and Vodafone have both continued to promote their flexible and 
home-working models, thereby reducing carbon emissions. Royal Mail has 
pioneered an innovative payroll-giving scheme with the Woodland Trust that 
encourages employees to reduce emissions and then offset what is left. And 
Chess PLC, a small business providing communications services, has rewarded 
employees who car-share with free parking. Improving energy efficiency and 
cutting back on the appalling levels of waste are the kind of simple things we 
can all do. (A speech at the Second May Day Business Summit on Climate 
Change in London on 1.05.2008)
In (3), the King makes statements about various organisations’ climate change activ-
ities by giving the impression that the members of his audience know the same facts, and 
thus no quotative evidence is required. In other words, we may argue that in (3) the King 
seeks to be on the same level as his audience by means of referring to the shared knowl-
edge, which needs neither further explanation nor quoting external sources to corroborate 
it. It is quite feasible that the King, or his speechwriters, use assumption that involves 
general knowledge to create an effect of affinity between the King and his audience.  
121Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
Finally, let us briefly illustrate the third frequent category of evidentiality associated 
with climate change, namely inference, which accounts for 13.9 % of all instances of 
evidentiality in the corpus. It should be, perhaps, reiterated that according to Aikhenvald 
(2004), inference typically involves visible and/or tangible outcomes and consequences. 
An example of inference in the corpus is provided by excerpt (4) below.  
(4) Actions which are good for the planet are also good for human health: tak-
ing a more active approach to transport by walking and cycling and adopting 
healthy diets reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also reduce rates of obesi-
ty, heart disease, cancer and more saving lives and money.  Reductions in air 
pollution also result with separate and additional benefits to human health.  A 
healthy planet and healthy people are two sides of the same coin. (A speech at 
The Royal Society in London on 25.02. 2015)
In (4), the King shares his observations and thoughts with the audience, which are, 
presumably, based upon evidence that the King regards as a result of prior factual knowl-
edge concerning the interplay between climate change mitigation (e.g. “a more active ap-
proach to transport by walking and cycling and adopting healthy diets reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions”) and human health (e.g. “reduce rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer”). 
In (4), inference that is manifested by the King’s statements is not fortuitous but stems 
from tangible results and facts that are based upon prior observations, reasoning and re-
search. We can argue that inference in (4) takes into account perceptible and ponderable 
outcomes of the intersection of the issue of climate change on the one hand and the topic 
of human health on the other hand. 
5  CONCLUSION
The article has presented and discussed a mixed-methods investigation of evidentiality in 
the corpus of speeches on the topic of climate change delivered by the King. It has been 
found that there are recurrent instances of evidentiality in the corpus. The corpus analysis 
has revealed that evidentiality associated with the issue of climate change is manifested 
by the following semantic categories: assumption, hearsay, inference, non-visual senso-
ry, quotative, and visual. Most of the instances of evidentiality associated with climate 
change are represented by the quotative category. This finding is interpreted in the study 
as the King’s discursive convergence on evidence-based climate change discourse by the 
British political actors, who represent the major mainstream political parties in the UK. 
Given that assumption is the second most frequently used category in the corpus, it is 
argued that its use forms part of the King’s discursive strategy of presenting himself as 
equal to his audience. 
122 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
It can be concluded that the King’s speeches on climate change are characterized by 
multiple instances of quotative evidentiality, which convey a tone of respect, seriousness, 
and trustworthiness. However, the present findings should be taken with caution, given 
that the study is one of the first attempts to apply the notion of evidentiality to climate 
change discourse. Despite the limitations of the study associated with the exclusive focus 
on the categories of evidentiality found in Aikhenvald (2004), the present investigation 
offers some novel avenues to be explored in future research, which, for instance, could 
focus on a possible interplay between King Charles III’s attitude towards knowledge 
about climate change and evidentiality associated with climate change.    
Acknowledgements
I express my gratitude to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful 
comments and suggestions. 
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POVZETEK
EVIDENCIALNOST V GOVORIH KRALJA KARLA III. O PODNEBNIH 
SPREMEMBAH 
Podnebne spremembe predstavljajo velik izziv za ljudi, okolje, planet nasploh, še zlasti pa za 
posamezne države (Gardiner, 2024; Yasmin, 2024). Če proučujemo obravnavo te tematike v 
posameznih državah, lahko na primeru Združenega kraljestva (ZK) opazimo, da so podnebne 
spremembe stalna tema političnih razprav glavnih političnih akterjev (Kapranov, 2024a; Ruiu et 
al., 2024). Ti podnebne spremembe predstavljajo skozi prizmo znanstvenih dokazov (Sébastien et 
al., 2014; Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014). Tudi trenutni britanski monarh, kralj Karel III., naj bi po 
nekaterih navedbah svoje izjave o podnebnih spremembah v javnih govorih in pisnih sporočilih 
za javnost podkrepljeval z znanstvenimi dokazi (Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013). A vprašanje, kako 
so dokazi oz. natančneje evidencialnost predstavljeni v govorih kralja Karla III. o podnebnih spre-
membah, še ni bilo podrobneje obravnavano. Zaradi pomanjkanja tovrstnih raziskav v pričujočem 
prispevku predstavljamo rezultate raziskave z mešanim metodološkim pristopom, katere cilj je bil 
(i) prepoznati, (ii) klasificirati in (iii) analizirati kategorije evidencialnosti v korpusu govorov kral-
ja Karla III. o podnebnih spremembah. V raziskavi evidencialnost obravnavamo kot samostojno 
jezikovno kategorijo (Aikhenvald, 2004), ki razkriva »različne vrste dokazov, s pomočjo katerih 
posameznik podaja stvarne trditve« (Anderson, 1986: 273). Analiza korpusa na podlagi Aikhen-
valdove (2004) klasifikacije evidencialnosti je pokazala, da evidencialnost v govorih kralja Karla 
III. sodi v več kategorij: (i) domneva, (ii) govorica, (iii) sklepanje, (iv) nevidno zaznavno, (v) ci-
tatno in (vi) vidno. Hkrati je v korpusu mogoče zaznati prevladovanje citatne vrste evidencialnosti, 
kar kaže na to, da govori kralja Karla III. o podnebnih spremembah v veliki meri predstavljajo na 
dokazih temelječa mnenja o tej temi.
Ključne besede: podnebne spremembe, evidencialnost, govori o podnebnih spremembah, kralj 
Karel III.
ABSTRACT
EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
The issue of climate change is a serious challenge to human beings, the environment, the planet in 
general and individual countries in particular (Gardiner, 2024; Yasmin, 2024). As far as the issue 
of climate change in individual countries is concerned, in the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, 
climate change resurfaces quite routinely as a topic of political debates by the major political 
actors (Kapranov, 2024a; Ruiu et al., 2024), who usually regard it through the lens of scientific 
evidence (Sébastien et al., 2014; Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014). The current British monarch, 
129Oleksandr Kapranov: EVIDENTIALITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE DISCOURSE BY KING CHARLES III
King Charles III, is also reported to use science-based evidence in his public speeches and written 
communication on the issue of climate change (Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013). Presently, however, 
little is known about how evidence, and more specifically, evidentiality are represented in King 
Charles III’s speeches on this issue. In light of the lack of studies on evidentiality in King Charles 
III’s speeches on climate change, the article presents a mixed-methods study, which aims to (i) 
identify, (ii) classify and (iii) analyse the categories of evidentiality in a corpus of speeches on cli-
mate change delivered by King Charles III. The study is informed by the view of evidentiality as a 
category in its own right (Aikhenvald, 2004), which expresses “the kinds of evidence a person has 
for making factual claims” (Anderson, 1986: 273). Guided by Aikhenvald’s (2004) classification 
of evidentiality, the analysis of the corpus revealed that evidentiality in King Charles III’s speech-
es on climate change was manifested by several categories, namely (i) assumption, (ii) hearsay, 
(iii) inference, (iv) non-visual sensory, (v) quotative, and (vi) visual. Furthermore, the analysis 
established that the quotative category of evidentiality was dominant in the corpus. The finding 
was taken to indicate that King Charles III’s speeches on the issue of climate change involved, to 
a substantial degree, evidence-based judgements on the matter.
Keywords: climate change, evidentiality, speeches on climate change, King Charles III