epistemic marker

noun

A linguistic element, such as a word or phrase, that indicates the speaker's or writer's attitude or degree of certainty regarding the truth or likelihood of a statement.

Meanings

nounepistemic marker (plural epistemic markers)

plural epistemic markers

  1. human sciencesA linguistic element, such as a word or phrase, that indicates the speaker's or writer's attitude or degree of certainty regarding the truth or likelihood of a statement.

    For epistemic markers we adopt an empirically-driven approach and utilize the epistemic markers identified in a corpus of dialogical argumentation by Hautli-Janisz et al. We consider expressions such as ‘I think’, ‘it is believed’ and ‘in my opinion’ to be epistemic.

    2023 October 30, Herbold et al., “A large-scale comparison of human-written versus ChatGPT-generated essays”, in Scientific Reports, volume 13, page 6
Cite this entry
APA

epistemic marker. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/epistemic%20marker

MLA

“epistemic marker.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/epistemic%20marker. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “epistemic marker,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/epistemic%20marker.

Source: epistemic marker on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.