Research Into Modal Hedges In Legislative Language Based On Corpus Analysis

With the development of linguistics, people are increasingly getting to know thenature of language. At the same time, forensic linguistics is progressing with thedeepening research upon nature of human language. Forensic linguistics results fromthe application of linguistic findings into jurisprudence， the urgent demand from legalactivities and the development of language. To some extent, legal language can restrictthe legal activities, and legal activities, in turn, are conducted according to legallanguage, which illustrates the close relationship between human and language. Thepurpose of linguistic research is to serve society and human beings and then improvethe relationship between human and language. In other words, the purpose of researchinto forensic language is to explain the social relationship in law and finally improve therelationship between human and law. Although legal language, as the same as any kindof language, can not avoid using modal hedges, legislative language, as the core part oflegal language, has comparatively fixed discourse structure, sentence structure andtendency in the use of some specific words. Therefore, for the use of modal hedges,legislative language is obviously different from general language as well, which mainlylies in semantic features and pragmatic functions.In this research, with the help of the UK Statute Law Database, we set up a corpusSLD with totally1million-word of30thousands legal texts in British Statute LawDatabase which includes a series of statute laws in England, Scotland, North Ireland andWales. By using the retrieval software WordSmith Tool, nine modal hedges (should,shall, could, can, might, may, would, will, must) are retrieved not only in the SLDwhich represents legislative language, but also in the corpora of Brown and LOB whichstand for general language. On the basis of data resulting from retrieval and calculation,this research discusses the questions like, what are characteristics in the use of modalhedges in legislative language and what are the reasons for those characteristics?Furthermore, by comparing the use of modal hedges in legislative language and generallanguage, it probes into the similarities and differences between these two types oflanguage. What is emphasized in the discussion are the semantic features and pragmaticfunctions of nine modal hedges in legislative language.According to the comparison and discussion, this research comes to conclusions asfollows:1. The vagueness exists not only in general-used language but also in the legislative language where vagueness is indispensable.2. The meanings of modalhedges in the legislative language are clearer than in the general-used language toensure the authority and enforcement of law.3. It is cautious in the use of several modalhedges which show weak epistemic meanings but can not be replaced by others andhave special functions.4. The legislative language is the unity of accuracy andvagueness.