A Study On The Use Of Modal Verbs And Their English Translations Of Chinese Diplomatic Discourse On The South China Sea Issue

China’s diplomatic discourse concerning the South China Sea issue carries the functions of expressing a position and eliminating doubts,and modal verbs are one of the critical semantic carriers of expressing emotion and attitude.Therefore,modal verbs are selected as the starting point of the present research for information on what kinds of official attitude and stance towards the South China Sea issue can be shown by the use of Chinese modal verbs(CMVs)and how the CMVs are translated.Based on a self-built bilingual parallel corpus of Chinese diplomatic discourse on the South China Sea issue and the modality theory,a systematic study on the use and English translations of modal verbs in the corpus has been conducted by the thesis with the aid of corpus-based research approaches.This paper finds that the usage characteristics of the CMVs can reveal China’s position towards the South China Sea issue to a certain extent.The macro relationships can be summarized into the following aspects: a)the CMVs tend to be affirmative,showing that the relevant discourse attaches great importance to building positive interpersonal relations with the media;b)the CMVs are mainly used to express deontic modality,illustrating that the diplomatic discourse emphasizes convincing people with facts and reasons;c)median-value modal verbs accounting for the highest proportion demonstrate a cooperative attitude;d)the lowest percentage of low-value modal verbs indicates the prestige and seriousness of the diplomatic discourse.At the micro-level,it finds that modality value,modality type and the relevant contexts attach various functions to different modal verbs,which are used to express diverse kinds of attitude,and the main findings are: a)high-value CMVs are generally geared to represent China’s determination to uphold its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.What’s more,the negations of high-value modals are mainly used to deny the legitimacy of the South China Sea arbitration case;b)the median-value CMVs expressing positive inclination are often used to indicate that China encourages to resolve relevant disputes through friendly negotiation and consultation;c)the CMVs with median modality value and expressing deontic modality are frequently applied in relevant diplomatic discourse to stress that respecting laws and regulations is the basis for the settlement of the issue.In terms of the English Translations of the CMVs,it finds that the translation strategies of the CMVs and their application rules can be generalized as follows: a)the equivalent EMVs are favored by translators when translating the median-value CMVs expressing epistemic and deontic modality;b)most of the CMVs expressing inclination are converted into English predicate phrases,modal nouns,and non-EMVs;c)parts of the CMVs that may be perceived as too colloquial and personal have been translated by the strategy of omission;d)it is not recommended to use high-value EMVs to translate high-value CMVs directly.Predicate phrases,adverbs,and other kinds of modal expressions are preferred for the translationof the high-value CMVs.At the same time,it finds that factors including contexts,grammatical differences between English and Chinese,communicative preferences,and dialogical situations,may influence the application of modal verbs and the choice of translation strategies.