In Example (79), the median-valued MV would construes less “mental” influence, and the core of the command (“help in facilitating Bob’s efforts”)is backgrounded, and hypotheticality takes place of bald command.In the light of the Politeness Strategy proposed by Brown & Levinson (1987), the use of this MV would makes administrative or bureaucratic discursive practices more “user-friendly”.This may also be what Fairclough (1989, 1992)regards as democratization in modern institutional discourse, where power is concealed through the apparently friendly language.In short, CDA attempts to combine modal force and value with ideology in discourse or text analysis.
In general, it can be found that SFL and those linguists under its influence argue in the following ways:
A.Modality is a system of choices and potentials.
B.Modality can be graded in terms of value, type, orientation and polarity.
C.Modality is related to text types or genre.
D.Modality is much related to power and solidarity.
These arguments imply that modal devices highlight the tenor or interpersonal metafunction involved.
2.2 Limitations of the previous studies on modality
This chapter has just reviewed the previous studies on modality.All these studies contribute a lot to the explorations of the nature of modality.Yet, there exist some defects in these theories.Generally speaking, their defects can be detected as follows.
First, the truth-condition correspondence and the approaches of cognitive and pragmatic linguistics have neglected some important aspects of modal devices, e.g.dynamic quantification, and text types (genre). In fact, MVs as modal devices involve many aspects, and should be considered dynamic rather than static.Take the truth-condition correspondence approach for example.MVs are said to be capable of being quantified.Ziegeler (2000: 27-61)claims that the grammaticalization of epistemic modal MVs from earlier deontic meanings in English is related to the operation of the second Maxim of Quantity (Q2)of Grice (1975), which holds that a restricted quantity of information is extended to refer to a wider range of meanings than are actually expressed.Yet, it remains much unknown how the extension of modal meanings is realized through quantification though there are some examples given.Also, take the cognitive and pragmatic approaches for example.It is true that the deployment of MVs in communication or discourse involves cognition and pragmatic roles, but most of the studies of this approach just give isolated clauses or small talks as examples.
Thus, people might wonder if the situation would be much clearer if they took corpus as the basis of study.Moreover, as far as large corpora are concerned, other factors should be taken into account as well, for instance, text types.The overall influence of a variety of factors has been neglected by the truth-condition correspondence, and the approaches of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics.
Second, the four approaches to modality, namely, the truth-condition correspondence, the approaches of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, and functional representation, have neglected the potentials of some adverbs in conveying modality.According to the functional representation approach, it seems that only disjuncts or interpersonal adverbs possess modality.However, it is known from SFL that even adjuncts of temporality such as sometimes and usually can be rich in modality when placed in the framework of interpersonal metafunction.Therefore, adjuncts and subjuncts should not be excluded from the studies of modality.
Third, none of the four approaches (i.e.the truth-condition correspondence, the approaches of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, and functional representation)has studied in detail the co-occurrences of modal devices in discourse.Based on the cognitive and pragmatic approaches, Hyland (2000)claims that modality can serve as interpersonal metadiscourse in academic writings, such as attitude markers, hedges and emphatics.In Hyland’s view, modal devices are of various kinds, for example, clauses containing the projections of ideas or locutions, adverbs, MVs, nouns and adjectives.However, it is a pity that he does not present a clear picture of how these modal devices are combined, interact with each other or are arranged at different levels of the academic discourse.The impression left, thus, is that people know academic writers tend to use a variety of modal devices as interpersonal metadiscourse, but why and how remain unknown.
SFL offers a good way of studying MVs in discourse.According to this approach such aspects as contexts of use, change of value and interpersonal function should be considered.Still, a defect lies with this approach, i.e.it is unknown if MVs can be examined without considering other modal devices that function simultaneously.It seems clear that the analysis of individual or isolated modal devices would be less convincing than that of the modal devices combined in revealing the impacts of modality on discourse or text.