A Corpus-based Analysis On Modality System Of Modal Operators In Maritime Documentaries

Modality system is a key point in systemic-functional grammar.It conveys people's attitude,opinions and values.According to Halliday,modality system contains modality type,modality value,modality orientation and modality polarity.Those four perspectives contribute to modality system.The researches on maritime English are not enough.Most of them focus on maritime conventions,maritime laws and maritime books while little energy is devoted to the application and communication of maritime English.This thesis is conducted on the basis of Maritime Documentaries Corpus to detect the modality features of communication at sea.With the aid of Antconc,SPSS and Foxpro Programs and based on MDC,LOB,IMC,this study evaluates the modality features of MDC through concise parameters.For modal operators play a more important role and appear most frequently in MDC,the main focus is modal operator.The quantitative method and qualitative method are applied here to make scientific conclusions.It is found that,compared with LOB and IMC,modal operators in MDC are usually used to express probability;In MDC,median operators are used more than that in LOB because there are narratives which are realized by medium-and-low-value modal operators to enhance the reliability and objectiveness of documentaries;Modal operators in MDC are usually used to express subjective implicit orientation;There is no significant difference among MDC,LOB and IMC in the use of modal operators in terms of modality polarity.The conclusions above interpret the modality features in MDC clearly.