The influence of genre and register on epistemic modality in spoken Englisha preliminary study
ISSN: 1133-0392
Datum der Publikation: 2002
Nummer: 10
Seiten: 11-42
Art: Artikel
Andere Publikationen in: Estudios ingleses de la Universidad Complutense
Zusammenfassung
Many of the existing studies on the influence of genre and register on modality in English tend to approach the use of all kinds of modality in a concrete text-type. Contrariwise, this article concentrates on one kind of modality (the epistemic), and covers its use in a wide range of genres within spoken English. This task has been carried out with the aid of six naturally occurring texts of 5,000 words each. The quantitative study of the epistemic devices in these texts shows the high degree of dependency of the expression of epistemic modality on certain factors of genre and register: the overall purpose of the text and the individual purposes...