A Cognitive Study On Modals In English Products Instructions

With the rapid development of globalization and being a member of WTO,economic exchanges have become more frequent between China and foreigncountries in the world. Thus, a large number of commodities and merchandises keepflooding into Chinese market. The English Productions Instructions (EPIs), as a brief“advertisement”, attract attentions not only by customers but also by manufacturers.Well-translated EPIs can boost communications among countries, lead to a successfulmarketing, and promote export. Besides, well-translated EPIs provide enoughinformation for the buyers and arouse their purchasing desire for even their interestsin new products. On the contrary, poorly-translated EPIs not only cause disasters tomanufactures and companies but also ruin peoples’ purchase temptation. Even a worseconsequence may happen for insufficient understanding or poorly-translation. Thecustomers may be disappointed for productions and do not buy it anymore once it cannot meet their expectation which comes from a misunderstanding of EPIs. So it isuseful and practical to make a good study of EPIs.Modality has always been the focus of logic and philosophy. The development oflinguistics witnessed the growing interest of researchers in this topic at home andabroad. Linguists have done extensive researches into modality with various methodsand obtained different findings. Besides the achievements, these studies have theirown limitations as well. For example, most researchers limited the discourse toliterary works, speeches and classroom dialogues, etc, while it lacks the analysis of modal verbs (modals for short) in practical writings.This thesis attempts to analyze modals in EPIs based on English CosmeticProducts Instructions (ECIs for short) from a cognitive perspective by using the forcedynamic theory. The thesis owns two purposes. One is to interpret the way how themeanings generate from different patterns of force dynamic; the second is tosummarize the relationship between different patterns of modals in ECIs and to applythe modals in a more comprehensive and appropriate way. This thesis is a tentativeattempt to explore modals in ECIs within the framework of cognitive linguistictheories.The whole thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is a briefintroduction which contains the background and the significance of the study, and thestructure of the thesis. The second chapter reviews research achievements in terms ofmodals, the study approaches and the previous studies. Next chapter includes the maintheory and methodology. Force dynamic theory is a new field of linguistic study,which comprises Agonist and Antagonist, Force scale and three patterns of it. Theanalysis of methodology is divided into data collection and data presentation. Thefourth chapter shows the main research achievements of the thesis. It discusses threemodal patterns in EPIs based on ECIs and their relations separately. The fifth chapteris a summary, which sets out the major findings, limitations and suggestions of thestudy.