The main concern of this paper is the use of the modal auxiliary SHOULD as a device for establishing the writer’s authority and managing the interaction with the reader of an academic text. The analysis is based on a corpus of 200 electronically available research articles published in the years 2001-2006 in five internationally recognised linguistics-related journals. Instances of SHOULD are classified according to their meaning as root, epistemic, quasi-subjunctive or hypothetical. Root SHOULD is classified as deontic or dynamic; epistemic SHOULD is identified as epistemic proper, inferred evidential or quotative evidential; quasi-subjunctive uses are examined for the possibility of root interpretation; and hypothetical SHOULD is studied for occurrences in subordinate clauses of condition and for uses with verbs of thinking and speaking. The findings indicate that the modal auxiliary SHOULD performs a variety of functions in academic discourse, from exhortation emphasising the speaker’s authority, impersonal directives relieving the speaker from the responsibility for issuing a command and suggestions put forward for consideration, through assessments of probability, to politeness strategies and attention-capturing devices.
Il presente studio si focalizza sull’uso dei verbi modali che indicano obbligo e necessità nel discorso accademico scritto e sul ruolo che essi hanno nella relazione autore-lettore. Inspirandosi all’articolo di C.M. Keck e D. Biber “Modal use in spoken and written university registers: A corpus-based study” (in English Modality in Perspective, eds. R. Facchinetti and F. Palmer, Peter Lang, 2004), l’analisi si concentra sulla frequenza, significato e funzione comunicativa dei (semi)modali must, have to, should e ought to nel genere accademico del research article. Questa ricerca si basa su un corpus di 200 research papers pubblicati in cinque rinomate riviste di linguistica negli anni 2001-2006, scritti in inglese da autori affiliati ad istituzioni accademiche inglesi. Recenti ricerche sulla comunicazione accademica hanno dimostrato che tale comunicazione è piena di significati interpersonali che conferiscono vari livelli di coinvolgimento rispetto alle proposizioni espresse, realizzando diversi gradi di somiglianza e riflettendo differenti schemi relazionali con i lettori. Il presente studio è particolarmente attento alle espressioni che realizzano un alto grado di modalità nel discorso accademico scritto e alla loro specifica funzione discorsiva – la costruzione e la rivendicazione dell’autorità.
(2008). Claiming Authority: Modals of Obligation and Necessity in Academic Written English. The Case of SHOULD [journal article - articolo]. In LINGUISTICA E FILOLOGIA. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10446/196
Claiming Authority: Modals of Obligation and Necessity in Academic Written English. The Case of SHOULD
2008-01-01
Abstract
The main concern of this paper is the use of the modal auxiliary SHOULD as a device for establishing the writer’s authority and managing the interaction with the reader of an academic text. The analysis is based on a corpus of 200 electronically available research articles published in the years 2001-2006 in five internationally recognised linguistics-related journals. Instances of SHOULD are classified according to their meaning as root, epistemic, quasi-subjunctive or hypothetical. Root SHOULD is classified as deontic or dynamic; epistemic SHOULD is identified as epistemic proper, inferred evidential or quotative evidential; quasi-subjunctive uses are examined for the possibility of root interpretation; and hypothetical SHOULD is studied for occurrences in subordinate clauses of condition and for uses with verbs of thinking and speaking. The findings indicate that the modal auxiliary SHOULD performs a variety of functions in academic discourse, from exhortation emphasising the speaker’s authority, impersonal directives relieving the speaker from the responsibility for issuing a command and suggestions put forward for consideration, through assessments of probability, to politeness strategies and attention-capturing devices.File | Dimensione del file | Formato | |
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