A Functional Study Of Epistemic Modality In Introductions Of Research Articles

The study of modality was originated from Aristotle.Later on,this area has aroused attention of scholars from different disciplines.Epistemic modality in this thesis is a semantic term coined by Lyon which equals Halliday's modalization in his functional account of modality.It encompasses all the resources which are concerned with the users' degree of certainty,or commitment to the truth,of their statement,or the assessment of something being,or having been the case.It is Martin who brought modality under Engagement system in APPRAISAL.The study of modality has been extended from the lexical grammatical level to textual level.However,most functional studies of modality are conducted within Halliday's framework while the newly developed APPRAISAL theory in which modality is considered as an engagement resource is seldom ploughed.As the first and critical part of research article,Introduction has received an increasing attention.In the past years,the structures and standardized writing of Introduction have been discussed by many scholars.Meanwhile,descriptive studies on the linguistic features of Introduction in special disciplines were carried out from the perspective of genre analysis. However,few have concerned with interpersonal meanings of epistemic modality and almost none has been conducted with Engagement framework.This study is conducted to enrich the study of the epistemic modality and Introductions while providing implications for Chinese scholars in writing Introduction and for the teaching of EAP.By drawing upon Martin and White's Appraisal framework,this study extends the meaning of epistemic modality as a resource of Engagement system and proposes a functional theoretical model for analyzing epistemic modality in Introductions.Twenty Introductions from four authoritative journals of linguistics and applied linguistics are chosen as the data for detailed qualitative analysis while quantitative statistics is inevitable for the analysis of distribution.Functions of epistemic modality in Introductions deconstructed by in-depth sample analysis are as follows:firstly,epistemic modality plays a vital role in coordinating relationships with readers.To be more specific,it serves as recognizing readers' role in ratifying knowledge,initiating and sustaining dialogic with readers and creating solidarity with discourse community.Secondly,epistemic modality is employed for staging academic communication in Introductions.To be subdivided,it caters for the objectivity of scientific reporting,the subjectivity of authorial claims and fulfills the communicative purposes of different moves in Introductions.The thesis includes six chapters with the arrangement as the following:Chapter 1 briefly introduces the background and significance of the present study and outlines the scope and structure of the thesis.Chapter 2 presents a review of researches on modality and Introductions and points out the limitedness on the functional analysis of epistemic modality from Engagement system.Chapter 3 provides an Engagement classification of epistemic modality and proposes a model for the analysis of functions of epistemic modality in Introductions after reviewing the theoretical foundations.Chapter 4 deconstructs how the resources of epistemic modality coordinate interpersonal relationships with putative readers. Chapter 5 explores how epistemic modality helps to staging academic communication in Introductions.Chapter 6 concludes the whole thesis by summarizing major findings of the present research,by discussing contributions of the study,and by suggesting limitations and directions for further research.