Schema-based Research On Modality In English Abstracts Of Linguistic Master Theses

The English abstract is an independent discourse that summarizes the content of the whole thesis,which has a predictive effect on the content and structure.It is an indispensable part of the academic paper.High-quality English abstract plays an important role in the internationalization of academic papers and the promotion of retrieval rates in international papers.Modality is a ubiquitous phenomenon in language and the main semantic carrier of interpersonal function.The analysis of modality is beneficial to inferring the speaker’s attitude on epistemic,emotion and willingness,understanding the speaker’s perceptions and intentions about things and narrowing the distance from the speaker.The analysis shows that the modality in English abstract is mainly divided into the proposition-domain modality,which includes the epistemic and the perception modality,as well as the event-domain modality,which embodies dynamic and deontic modality.A schema is an interactive knowledge structure or a building block of cognitive ability,referring to a knowledge framework in which humans abstractly summarize the concepts of a given activity.In contrast,a schema can be used to recognize,construct,and interpret linguistic phenomena in life.From the perspective of schema,this paper studies the modality in English abstracts of linguistic master theses and attempts to form several schema to help readers better understand the meaning of the abstracts.At the same time,it provides a framework for the English abstracts writing.This paper adopts quantitative and qualitative method to analyze the 80 English abstracts selected form linguistic master theses from 2013 to 2016,the study will be developed from analyzing modal operators,modal adjuncts,expansion of predicator and other linguistic representations of modality.The study found that the modality in English abstracts can be divided into cognition,perception,willingness and volition modality,then we have corresponding epistemic,perception,deontic and dynamic schema.Epistemic schema indicates speculation,hypothesis,necessity and possibility these four modal meanings,using modality markers of deduction,of which modality value is lower,and orientation of modality is implicit subjective;The perception schema stands for the modal meanings of belief,confidence,expectation and wish.It uses the modality marker of perception and its modal value is medium,the orientation of modality is implicit objective.Then,the deontic schema expresses the obligation,persuasion,supervision and suggestion,using the modality marks of obligation,of which modal value is higher,and the orientation of modality is implicit objective;The dynamic schema embodies modal meanings of ability,intention and purpose.It uses the modality marks of purpose,of which modal value is medium,and the modality orientation is implicit objective.Schema-based study on modality is conducive to better interpreting the modal meaning embodied in English abstracts,providing a modal framework for the writing of English abstracts and helping the academic achievements go world.