Giulia Lombardi, Principal Investigator of the project, participated in the IX International Conference Marcatori discorsivi nelle lingue romanze (DISROM IX), held at the University of Oviedo on 10–12 June 2026.

During the conference, she presented a paper entitled I marcatori epistemici negli atti di parte tra stance epistemica, mitigazione e argomentazione.

The presentation explored the role of epistemic markers in Italian legal pleadings, drawing on data from the AttiChiari Corpus, a large collection of legal briefs developed within the PRIN project of the same name. The study investigated how lawyers use epistemic expressions to modulate commitment, distribute enunciative responsibility, and strengthen the persuasive force of legal argumentation.

Particular attention was devoted to the interaction between mitigation, strengthening, and epistemic stance. Building on an integrated framework combining theories of mitigation, epistemic modality, and stance, the analysis showed that many epistemic markers perform multiple functions simultaneously and cannot be rigidly classified as either mitigating or strengthening devices.

The findings suggest that, in legal pleadings, epistemic stance is closely intertwined with argumentative construction. Rather than simply expressing degrees of certainty, epistemic markers contribute to the negotiation of interpretative authority and to the management of competing perspectives within legal discourse.

The presentation forms part of the broader research activities of the project, which investigates the linguistic and pragmatic features of contemporary legal writing and the mechanisms through which legal texts construct authority, persuasion, and institutional legitimacy.