A Contrastive Study Of Modality In English And Chinese Journalism Reviews

Modality has always been the hot issue in Linguistics,and many scholars have conducted a great deal of research on this subject and achieved gratifying achievements.However,most previous studies focused on the polysemia of auxiliary verbs and the expansion of modality system,and a few of them involved with other modal expressions.Therefore,the writer will conducted a contrastive study on the linguistic realizations of modality in English and Chinese journalism review texts within the frame of modality system in Systemic-Functional Grammar, and try to find out the similarities and differences of modal expressions in the two languages.The present study heavily relies on Halliday's account of modality from a functional perspective.To be clear,the contrastive study will be conducted from the following six aspects: Finite Modal Operator,Modal Adjuncts,Modal Lexical Verbs,Nominal Modal Expressions, Adjectival Modal Expressions and Metaphors of Modality.In this study,30 English journalism reviews are collected from New York Times and 30 Chinese ones come from REN MIN RI BAO (People's Daily)within the time span of one year.We hope that the findings will open a door to the study of Chinese Modality and also improve foreign language teaching,English journalism reviews writing and translating.Generally speaking,differences as well as similarities are in existence with regard to the realization of modality in Chinese and English journalism review texts.In both of the two languages,the main linguistic realization methods of Modality are Finite Modal Operators and Modal Adjuncts,and the other three lexical methods are relatively peripheral.And the differences mainly exist in the choice of modal values,modal orientations and modal types so on.Besides,the study shows that the choices of linguistic realizations of modality are influenced by many factors, including tenor of texts,traditional culture and social background and so on..