Epistemic modal markers in two domains of academic research papers in English

Abstract

In this paper we compare the combinations of epistemic modal markers in research articles in medicine and humanities written in English. In our analysis, we focus on three aspects. First, we look at the distribution of combinations of MODAL AUXILIARY + MODAL ADVERB (emphasizer) used in an epistemic sense in two subdomains of academic writing, ACAD: Medicine and ACAD: Humanities in COCA (Davies, 2008(Davies, -2018. Second, we investigate the statistical significance of the differences between the two subdomains. Finally, we consider the relevance of the epistemic modal markers in presenting the argumentation line in research articles in medicine and humanities. The results demonstrate the difference in preference in co-occurrences of the selected modal markers in the two distinct academic subcorpora and indicate to what extent they are a significant feature to be included in developing academic writing skills, which is crucial for the effective and convincing communication of research results.

A Contrastive Study of Deontic Modality in Parallel Texts

“…The term deontic modality comes from the Greek word δέον, δεοντος ('duty'). Deontic modality means that the speaker "intervene[s] in the speech event by laying obligations or giving permission" (Downing and Locke 1992, 382); it conveys the idea that it is necessary for someone to do something (Depraetere and Langford 2020, 273;Panocová and Lukačín 2019). Lyons (1977, 823) claims that "[w]hen we impose upon someone the obligation to perform or to refrain from performing a particular act," we are describing "the state-of-affairs that will obtain if the act in question is performed" rather than his performance of that act.…”