Evidentiality in Ivanka's and Chelsea's Convention Speeches and Its Discursive Power

This paper investigates evidentiality in the convention speeches of Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton during the 2016 American General Election and its discursive power,focusing on the evidential strategies employed by the two speakers to achieve their persuasive goals and then scrutinizing the information credibility and speakers' engagement indicated by the evidentials.The study suggests that each type of evidential markers realizes certain speech acts and eventually brings about some discursive power according to the polls and news from popular media.