Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
The notion modality has long been a hot topic studied by many philosophers,logicians and linguists since it’s introduced into classical philosophy at the time ofAristotle, more than 2000 years ago. However, its initial research by traditionalgrammar is merely restricted in the study of modal auxiliaries, which believes thatmodality is a series of model verbs used to express meanings, leaving the factors oflanguage context and human neglected. While the emergence of systemic-functionalgrammar breaks through the limitation of traditional grammar which employsfunction as a principle to classify and describe modality systemically within itsframework. The theory was proposed by Halliday(1960) who generalized themetafunctions of language as ideational, interpersonal and textual. Among whichinterpersonal function refers to we use language to interact with others, to establishand maintain relations with them, to please them, to anger them, and influence theirbehavior, to get their help or sympathy (language serves as a medium betweenindividuals) (Yang Zhong, 2011).While the interpersonal meanings of language areexactly realized by mood and modality. Mood concerns the interaction betweenaudiences and speakers, while modality involves all the aspects of discourseexpressed or evaluated by speakers and audiences. Performing as one of the mostimportant means in realizing interpersonal function, modality is a kind of subjectivejudgment which conveys the speaker’s perspective and the validity of his or herassertion, as well as the attitude and emotion of suggestion (right or wrong) in thediscourse.
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1.2 Objective and Significance of the Research
In the light of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar, the objective of thisthesis is to analyze the features of modality system and their distribution in Englishnews discourse. Furthermore, the thesis also aims to figure out how the interpersonalmeanings of modality are realized. In the modern world, news is the main channel thatprovides information for people to know about what’s happening around them or evenin the whole world. As a matter of fact, it also helps shape people’s cognition andideology. However, to some extent, news is not such objective as people haveimagined. It is an indirect expression of attitudes or opinions representing the reporters and their authority behind them. In this way, different meanings of modalitywould be employed. On the other hand, in terms of its significance in English learningand teaching, news English is capable of reflecting new features and changes ofEnglish language and English newspaper is usually the reading material. Based onthese assumptions, such a kind of study may be considered to be feasible and of greatimportance.Theoretically, by analyzing modality in news discourse, its interpersonalmeanings in this genre could be reflected. Further, the application ofsystemic-functional grammar in discourse analysis and language communication mayalso be perfected so as to provide references for relevant researches.Practically, on the one hand, it is expected that modality features, distributionand its interpersonal meanings in English new discourse could be elaborated, whichmay attract people’s more attention to the use of modality in news report, especiallyfor the journalists. To some degree, it is also anticipated that the study results couldprovide some practical guidance for using modality correctly in their news reportswriting as well as help them to improve their language awareness. What is conveyedthrough news reports would more or less exert influence on readers’ viewpoints. Onthe other hand, a better understanding of modality use may help readers to grasp thereporters’ orientation (subjective or objective) so that implicit meaning of the newscan be perceived. Most importantly, it attempts to give guidance on how to expressopinions accurately and properly by using modality. For English learning and teac
