A Study Of Modality In Prefaces Of L2 Academic Books By Chinese English Writers

According to systemic-functional linguistics,language has three metafunctions,namely,ideational function,interpersonal function and textual function,and modality is the main way to realize the interpersonal function.So,many linguists focused on modality,and did many significant researches,such as modality analysis in academic discourse,political discourse and so on.In academic discourse analysis,modality is mainly analyzed in abstracts,bodies,acknowledgements and so on.However,few studies focused on modality in prefaces of academic books,especially in L2 academic books.This thesis analyzes modality in prefaces of academic books,and tries to find the features of modality.As a very important part in academic books,preface introduces the writer's writing motivation and the contents to the readers,the aim of which is to introduce and recommend the book,so it has a strong feature of dialogicality.Therefore,preface can be seen as a literary form which has abundant modality resources.This study uses Halliday's modality system as the theoretical framework which includes three variables,namely,modality types,modality orientations,and modality values,to analyze the modality pattern in prefaces of academic books.This thesis uses corpus-based method to study modality in prefaces of academic books.Altogether 60 academic books were selected from the filed of linguistics and applied linguistics,among which 30 books were written by Chinese English writers and the other 30 books by native English writers,and the time was located from 2000 to 2015.Every book selected was written by one author,and the preface of the book was finished by the same author.This study extracted prefaces from these academic books,and built two corpora.The combination of quantitative and qualitative researches was adopted to analyze modality pattern in the corpora.This study mainly studied two questions: 1.What are the features of modality in prefaces of L2 academic books? 2.What are the similarities and differences in modality in prefaces of academic books written by Chinese English writers and native English writers?Results show that in prefaces of academic books by Chinese English writers,L2 writers mainly adopt modal operators to realize modal meanings.In addition,L2 writers frequently use modal expressions reflecting “probability” type,modal expressions indicating subjective-implicit orientation,and modal operators with medium and low values.In the contrast of modality in prefaces of academic books by native English writers and Chinese English writers,both similarities and differences exist.Concerning the similarities,modal operators are the main way to realize modal meanings by L1 and L2 writers.In addition,modal expressions reflecting “probability” type,modal expressions indicating subjective-implicit orientation,and modal operators with medium and lowvalues are frequently used by both L1 and L2 writers.Regarding the differences,L1 writers tend to adopt more modal expressions to construct their own academic stances.Besides this,modal expressions reflecting “probability” and “ususality” type,modal expressions indicating subjective-explicit orientation,and modal operators with high value used by L1 writers are much more than those by L2 writers.This study proves that it is feasible to use modality system to analyze the realization of interpersonal meanings in prefaces.This study can not only expand the field of interpersonal function analysis,but also give some enlightenments for L2 academic writing in China.