A Functional Approach To Modality In English Academic Book Reviews

Modality has been one of the most pervasive and persistent problems in logic, philosophy and particularly in linguistics. The study of modality may date back to Aristotle, who focused his attention on modal logic. In the late twentieth century, the development of linguistics aroused many efforts to study modality at home and abroad. Linguists, from various angles, have done extensive research on modality with their own methods. Among them, systemic-functional linguists, represented by Halliday, approach it in a very unique way. They argue that modality is a subsystem of the mood system, realizing the interpersonal meanings of language. It is not only associated with modal verbs, but also with interpersonal metaphor, modal adjuncts, modal adjectives and modal nominal equivalents. It is unfortunate that systemic-functional linguists' treatment on modality is confined to the level of clause. But in certain discourse, how is modality realized and how does it function? This paper, based on the theoretical framework of Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, ventures to investigate the linguistic representations, frequency, distribution and function of modality in English academic book reviews. It also attempts to provide some explanations as to why the modality appears the way as it is.The dissertation falls into six chapters. The first chapter reviews the history of modality studies at home and abroad. The second chapter leads to the theoretical background and presents the fundamental views about modality. The third chapter illustrates the stylistic features and structure of book reviews. The fourth chapter goes into the study of statistics and analysis. Modal expressions are identified contextually and classified in the light of Halliday's theory. The results suggest that modality is embedded in various sections with uneven distribution. The choice of it is closely correlated with the communicative intentions of the discourse and is determined by the contextual factor of tenor. The fifth chapter explores functions of modality and indicates that modality can realize not only interpersonal meanings but also textual meanings of language at the level of discourse. The sixth chapter is the conclusion which generalizes the whole thesis and points out the significance of this study.