English Modality In The Light Of The Adaptation Theory

Modality has been a heated topic of philosophers, logicians and linguists for a very long time, as it is regarded as one of the fundamental categories of human language and thought. In the linguistic field solely, linguists have done extensive researches on modality from various perspectives, such as the perspectives of traditional grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and systemic-functional grammar, which contribute a lot to the study of modality. However, there is by no means agreement or uniformity on what modality actually is, and the vagueness of modality still exists.The present thesis, which focuses on the modal verbs, aims to account for the vagueness of modality under the framework of Jef.Verschueren's (1999/2000) Adaptation Theory. The adaptation theory claims that the use of language is a process of making choices and adaptation. Furthermore, it takes into account the full complexity of its linguistic, social-cultural and cognitive factors.In the present thesis, the adaptation theory will be exploited as a theoretical framework to present a consistent and systematic analysis of English modality. Within the three properties of the adaptation theory—variability, negotiability and adaptability, it can be seen that the use of modality is to make negotiable choices under a highly flexible principle from a variable range of modal expressions in such a way as to satisfy specific communicative needs. The core of this study is the formulation of a theoretical adaptation model and a detailed analysis of the use of modality with linguistic, social-cultural and mental factors into account. First of all, communicators should adapt to the linguistic rules ("grammatical rules" in the present thesis), concerning past/future tense and negation, so as to make the communication smooth as well. Secondly, modality itself is used as one of the communicative strategies, which is adapted to the social-cultural elements. What's more, communicators should adapt to his or her mental states and turn to the use of modality for realization. The findings in the present study have theoretical implications. The adaptation model illustrates the adapting process of the use of modality in communication, and probes into the dynamic generation of meaning in the use of modality, which may shed light on future studies on the use of modality.