Mood and Modality in English

Depraetere, Ilse; Reed, Susan

doi:10.1002/9780470753002.ch12

Cited by 44 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…'Must', as discussed earlier, has two basic meanings. The deontic meaning of 'must' implies necessity and obligation while its epistemic meaning is concerned with making confident inferences (Downing & Locke, 1992;Depraetere & Reed, 2006;Mortelmans, 2010). Still, 'must' could be (but rarely) used to express a dynamic meaning based on the context of use in which it appears.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modals in Arab EFL Learners' Composition: A Corpus-based Approach

Btoosh¹

2019

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This study presents a corpus-based investigation of how Arab students of English use modality in academic writing. Although the primary focus of the study is on the writing of Arab L2 learners, regular comparisons have been conducted with native-speakers' writing with the aim of delineating the areas of similarities and differences between the two groups (leaners and native speakers). Furthermore, in an attempt to check whether the features characterizing the use of modality in Arab L2 academic writing is part of a general tendency or an idiosyncratic creation that exclusively applies to Arab students of English, results have been frequently checked against some other relevant studies. The study reveals a gap between native speakers and learners in terms of the frequency count of the modals used. Findings also show that many of the modality features used in the learner corpus reflect a general tendency on the part of most L2 learners. Yet, some other features, including the overuse of 'must', 'can' and 'should' and the underuse of the epistemic modals 'may', 'might', 'would', and 'could', are likely to be attributed to both learners' general tendency and L1 rhetoric, where certainty-oriented and collectivistic-oriented styles prevail.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modals in Arab EFL Learners' Composition: A Corpus-based Approach

Btoosh¹

2019

lls

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“…Moreover, modal auxiliaries also belong to the concept of modality which cuts across the concept of hedging (Markkanen & Schrӧder, 1997;Mauranen, 1997). Discussions of modality, in English particularly, have concentrated mostly on modal auxiliaries (e.g., Coates, 1983;1995;Collins, 2009;Depraetere & Reed, 2006;Palmer, 2001). It is therefore the aim of this article to investigate hedging through the use of modal auxiliaries in English academic writing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hedging Through the Use of Modal Auxiliaries in English Academic Discourse

Hardjanto

2016

Jur, Hum

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As a communicative strategy, hedging plays a central role in academic writing. Numerous different linguistic forms can be used to express this strategy. This article attempts to investigate modal auxiliary verbs as the principal means of expressing hedging in English academic discourse. For this purpose, a corpus of 75 primary empirical research articles from economics, linguistics, medicine, natural sciences and engineering was analyzed quantitatively with the help of corpus linguistic method. The results revealed that modal auxiliaries were used most frequently in linguistics and economics and least frequently in engineering and natural sciences while their use in medicine came in between. This seems to suggest that there is noticeable disciplinary variation in the degree of hedging through the use of modal auxiliaries in English research articles. Modal auxiliaries tend to be more common in soft sciences than in hard sciences whereas their use in health sciences in comparison with soft and hard sciences does not seem to show any significant difference.

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“…9 For a more detailed discussion of these and other tests of idiomaticity for the quasi-modals see Westney (1995: 18ff.). 10 A lucid overview of the issues discussed in this section can be found in Depraetere and Reed (2006). This chapter deals with the modals and quasi-modals of necessity and obligation.…”

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confidence: 99%