Abstract

The paper deals with sentence adverbials and clauses with the propositional content “no doubt can be cast on ...” and their occurrence in monological argumentative discourse. Such adverbials and clauses are regarded as illocutionary indicators of indirect directives aiming at the verbal behaviour of the reader, or, more precisely, at the omission of verbal activity on reader's part. Such attempts to influence the reader's behaviour can be both fair ones, to anticipate reader's objections, but also manipulative ones, so as to suppress them. That is why some general guidelines are given how to distinguish between the discourse-organizing and the manipulative function of indirect directives in concern