A Corpus-based Study Of Modality In The Sign Of Four

As we all know, the detective fiction is one of the most popular genres in the popular literature. ArthurConan Doyle is one of the most popular detective novelists and he is awarded “the father of the Britishdetective fiction” because of the successful shaping of the most famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.His works that are greeted by lots of people have the prolonged charm. The previous researches on hisworks mainly focus on literature level such as character image, and most of them are oriented towardsintuition and subjective qualitative analysis. However, this paper is based on the corpus and under thetheoretical framework of Halliday’s modality system in systemic functional grammar so as to make aqualitative and quantitative analysis of his works.The Sign of Four, one of Conan Doyle’s representative works, is constructed specially as the observedcorpus. At the same time, the reference corpus is constructed by the author through random sampling sometexts of fiction in the written part of the British National Corpus. The establishment of the two corpora aimsto obtain the unique modality characteristics of the detective fiction The Sign of Four through comparisonand then discuss the interpersonal function The Sign of Four conveys.The major findings are as follows. Firstly, among the modal expressions, there is no significantdifference in the use of adjuncts of temporality and comment adjuncts between the two corpora. However,there is a significant difference in the use of other modal expressions between the two corpora. Comparedwith other novels, the novel of The Sign of Four tends to adopt more finite modal operators and less othermodal expressions. Then, there is also a significant difference in the use of modality value between the twocorpora. The frequency of median and low value is higher in The Sign of Four than that in other novels. But the frequency of high modality value is comparatively lower in The Sign of Four than that in other novels.In addition, there is a significant difference in the use of other three modality orientations between the twocorpora except for implicit objective orientation. The frequency of explicit objective orientation andimplicit subjective orientation in The Sign of Four is higher than that in other novels. However, thefrequency of explicit subjective orientation in The Sign of Four is lower than that in other novels. At last,this paper states that realization methods of the interpersonal functions in The Sign of Four are showingpoliteness, indicating objectivity and building a mysterious atmosphere.This paper is based on the combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to make aclose study of modality in The Sign of Four. On one hand, it provides a good example for the succeedingstudies of literature works. On the other hand, the summary of the distinctive characteristics of the modalityin The Sign of Four may be of some reference value to literature teachers and the writers engaging indetective fictions.