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An Analysis of Modality in Title Discourse

Author: ZhangFengHui
Tutor: ZengPuChu
School: Xiangtan University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: CEIC Text Titles Modality Meaning Content Predicting Textual Teaching
CLC: H314
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2012
Downloads: 43
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Abstract

Interpersonal function refers to the interactive relation established by the speaker andreceiver in discourse situation. Modality is the way to show speaker’s evaluation and attitudestoward a statement or event, which is the main lexical grammar source to realize interpersonalmeaning.This research aims to explore the use of modality in titles of College English IntegratedCourse (CEIC for short) published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. It is donein the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar and takes the titles in CEIC as theresearch samples. There are96titles in all including the32unit titles and64text titles. Thisresearch discusses different modal expressions in titles and analyzes them from modality type,value, polarity and orientation in Halliday’s model. It also tries to make content predictionbased on the analysis combined with cognitive, associative and intertextual perspectives.Through the analysis of modality in the samples, this research concludes that modality,as the way to realize the interpersonal meaning, exists in titles in variant ways. Modaladjuncts like adjectives and adverbs take the highest frequency. Besides, title’s syntacticstructure is also the way to realize modality. According to the analysis, objective expressionsare more favorable than subjective ones, and subjective implicitness is more frequently usedthan objective implicitness. The current texts selected in CEIC cover different genresincluding narration, exposition and argumentation. Narration takes the highest ratio. Modalityhas different characteristics in different genres and it is practical to make a genre predictionby analyzing modality in titles. The predicting degrees are different. This research finds thatmodality in narration is often not realized by modal finite but other ways such as the title’ssyntactic structure or verb tense. Modality in argumentation is often subjective explicitnessand its content predicting degree is comparatively high. Modality in exposition is usuallyobjective implicitness, which helps writers to express themselves in the objective way andtries to avoid their personal views explicitly. This research discusses the practical use ofanalyzing modality in making content prediction in ways of cognition, association andintertextuality.This research verifies that modality is a lexical grammar source to realize interpersonal meaning in different types of texts, including titles in CEIC. And it provides a way tounderstand the modal expressions and their semantic and pragmatic meanings better.Furthermore, the present research is supposed to provide another perspective in Englishreading and writing. It helps readers to understand the author’s view and evaluations better inreading and know how to express one’s own views or attitudes in writing.

An Analysis of Modality in Title Discourse

Abstract

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