Certainty-uncertainty - and the attitudinal space in between: [the papers collated in this volume were all presented at the international conference entitled "The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty : Linguistic, Psychological and Philosophical Aspects held at the University of Macerata from 3 to 5 Ocober 2012]

The selected papers of this volume cover five main topics, namely 'Certainty: The conceptual differential'; '(Un)Certainty as attitudinality'; 'Dialogical exchange and speech acts'; 'Onomasiology'; and 'Applications in exegesis and religious discourse'. By examining the general theme of the communication of certainty and uncertainty from different scientific fields, theoretical approaches and perspectives, this compendium of state-of-the-art research papers provides both an interdisciplinary comparison of the latest investigations, methods and findings, and new advances and theoretical insights with a common focus on human communication.

Religious belief is an emotional attitude that is not based on a "certain" experience. Adolescence is a very uncertain stage of life and an unstable faith can mirror this turbulence. The aim of this work is to investigate the discursive construction of religious experience in late adolescence. We asked 230 university students to write about their religious views. Their texts were analyzed using content analysis and critical discourse analysis. We divided the responses into four groups: believers, atheists, doubters and agnostics. The different rhetorical strategies arising from the contrast be