Epistemic marker or stance framer? The use of “eu acho” in conversational interactions of BP

This study aims to analyse whether “eu acho” is used as an epistemic marker of low certainty, as proposed in the classical literature, or as a stance marker. For this, we used the corpora of recordings of four semi-structured interactions between pairs of young adult college students, speakers of Standard Brazilian Portuguese. We identified 145 occurrences, transcribed, annotated, and analyzed, taking as our starting point its use as a marker of supposition and the dimensions of the stance triangle: evaluation (/positioning) and alignment. Our analysis also led to the creation of two other categories related to the use of “eu acho” as a discursive organizer: the insertion of a digression and the conclusion of an argument. The results show that “eu acho” is predominantly used as a metadiscursive framing device for evaluation, followed by its use as a framing device for supposition and alignment.