Modality and attitude. Author function.

Modality has come to mean a variety of different things in different academic and cultural domains. In linguistics it is the cover terms for the ways that are available to a speaker within a language for expressing opinion or attitude. In particular, modality denotes the linguistic means available for qualifying any claim or commitment you make in language. Following systematic linguistics(as set out in Haliday, 1994), I shall focus on four parameters, in particular, in respect of which a speaker's utterances can be qualified: qualifications of probability, obligation, willingness, or usuality. Most of the utterances we make can be qualified in terms of strength or weakness of the probability, obligation, willingness, or usuality, with which we stand by them. Take the case of someone speaking about a new person in their life, with whom they are becoming romantically involved. If he says: "She certainly is an interesting person" he has included probability modality using the word "certainly"; if he adds "I need to think of some really fun activity to invite her to" he is using obligation modality by using "need to"; I wonder, if she'd like to go iceskating is willingness modality(here, attributed to the other party, not the speaker) I rarely meet people I feel this good about, where "rarely" carries usuality modality. Of the four modality parameters, I will focus on, perhaps the more interesting is the first two, probability and obligation. I will discuss, in turn, the chief means of expressing modality, beginning with modal verbs.

Expressing modality: modal verbs.

Take any bare factual statement, such as these:

Billings is in Montana.
Billings is not in Montana.

In a sense both of these are absolute. They are absolutely positive and negative respectively. The speaker is admitting no shadow of doubt into either statement, nor anything of his or her attitude about these statements.But between the absolutely positive and absolutely negative sentences we can fashion many kinds of in-between or qualified sentences, which, revealingly, are less than absolute about something being or not being the case. These are the kind of thing I mean by modalized sentences or sentences with modality. As noted above, we modalize sentences chiefly in terms of one or more of the following four parameters: probability, obligatoriness, willingness, and usuality.

Now if we construct modalized sentences about Billings and Montana in terms of these four parameters, some of them will sound distinctly odd, given what we know about Billings.

Probability: Billings might be in Montana.
Obligation:  Billings should be in Montana.
Willingness: Billings would be in Montana if it were given the choice.
Usuality: Billings is usually in Montana.

But notice two things: these sentences are not actually ungrammatical, and their oddness does not simply rest in the sentences themselves but points back to some oddness in their utterer. This is the essence of modality: to be revealing of the speaker's attitudes and judgements.

Other versatile modals include may, can, should, ought to and might, for example should sometimes conveys obligation: "You really should see a doctor" and on other occasions conveys probability: "They should have reached their hotel by now". When confirming for yourself that different meanings are indeed involved, it is tremendously useful to devise paraphrases of the sentences you are examining, and in particular paraphrases which contain modality language of the appropriate kind. Thus, one might paraphrase "You really should see a doctor" with "It is fairly strongly required that you see a doctor" = obligation.

The modal verbs mentioned so far fall into scales of intensity or emphaticness, relative to each other, particularly in relation to probability and obligation. Thus the following series of sentences shows a steady increase in probability modality, from weak possibility to near-certainty:

Ex: Yeltsin might fall, Yeltsin may fall, Yeltsin will probably fall, Yeltsin must fall.

The Meaning of Will: Modality, or Future or Both.

There is one modal verb "will", which causes particular difficulties when one is identifying modal signals in a text, since it sometimes expresses probability, other times willingness, and other times again, I shall argue, no modality whatsoever.

Whenever the auxillary verb Will is used in texts, deciding whether or not the verb isd genuinely expressive of the modalizing meaning is particularly contentious. Grammarians of English is still arguing over the issues involved. Here we will take the view that "will" commonly, but not always, carries one or the other of two modality meanings: probability, as in "That lad will come to a sticky end" or willingness as in "Will you have some tea?" Hence "will" usually means roughly: "It is very probable that" or "the individuals denoted by the clause subject "is/are willing to". On some other occasions, neither of these modality meanings is uppermost, and then the verb is an almost "modality-free marker of future time reference. When the school principal announces that "the silent auktion will take place in the hall" there is no sense of the speakers qualifying this statement by adding a "very probably" statement. We are being told in a very virtually unqualified way just where the auction will be held.

In formal terms there frequently seems to be a contrast between modalized uses of "will" and what I am calling unmodalized "pure future reference" uses of "will". This is that the latter, unlike the former, typically can be paired with a semantically equivalent and acceptable simple-present tense version of the same preposition, without the "will" auxilliary at all.

Expressing modality: modal adverbs.

The second commonest way of expressing modality is by means of modal adverbs: probably, possibly, certainly, necessarily, usually, always, obligatorily, definately, surely. Ex:

Jerry always outwits Tom.
Popeye certainly loves spinach.

And of course modal auxiliary and adverb can be combined:

Billings must surely be in Montana.

To re-iterate the idea that modality is the formulation of statements which lie somewhere between an absolute positive or negative, notice that even the strong expression of certainty, ex.: I definately, certainly saw Jim take the money" is less absolute than "I saw Jim take the money".

Methaphorized or advanced modality.

English has yet more ways of encoding these qualifications to do with probability, obligation, usuality, and willingness.
"I don't believe we've met (= probability)
"I think it is going to rain" (=probability)
There are good reasons for saying that in both of these cases, the speaker's subjective modality is being expressed. One thing that seems clear is that no ordinary processes of believing or thinking are being reported here.

Beyond modality: Evaluative devices.

In addition to the modality devices listed above, we can look at other means by which the text speaker's stance or attitude towards the material he relates is revealed. In particular, we can note three kinds of highly evaluative items:
1) evaluative verbs(with first person texts): deplore, regret, welcome, concede,deny. Each of these carries a clear presupposition(an important topic in itself)
2) evaluative adjectives and adverbs: regrettably, surprisingly, thankfully, deplorable, admirable, incredible
3) generic sentences:
    The first casualties of war is truth.
    War is deplomacy carried on by other means.
    War is business carried on by other means.
     Property is theft.

In other words, each of the above kinds of language found in all kinds of discourse, can be a useful pointer to the overt or underlying attitudes and assumptions, indeed the ideological commitments, of the individuals with which they are associated. If a narrator or character says that they deplore the lack of respect shown to the monarchy and our heritage you know you are not listerning to a republican in America. And when the lawyer in Agatha Christie's story "Witness for the Prosecusion" opines that "Women were the devil when they got their knife into you" one is justified in suspecting him of a general misogamy.

Items in number 2 here are likely to cause most trouble. The question that frequently gets asked when one is looking for attitude-expressive adjectives in a text, is "Where does one call a halt?" The answer is that there is not always a hard-and-fast way of separating out those adjectives in a text which are related to an individual's distinct perspective from the larger set of evaluative adjectives which are simply contributing to descriptions in a more neutral way. You have to apply a rule of thumb, which is: do you judge this adjectival evaluation to be specifically the opinion of the speaker(hence speaker-expressive), or is this adjective a relatively neutral or impartial description of the entiry being described? Only the former, of course, are relevant here.

I have listed generic sentences as the third kind of evaluative device particularly deserving attention, as revealing of speaker's attitude. Generic sentences are sentences which assert something to be a general truth, typically timelessly true, i.e. true throughout time. And the truth asserted is predicated not of a specific individual, but of a whole set of things, which is also an open or potentially open set of things. That is, it is typically impossible to list all the members of the set indicated by the generic referent.

1) The panda's preferred diet is bamboo shoots.
2) Pandas' preferred diet is bamboo shoots.
3) A panda's preferred diet is bamboo shoots.

All three of these are generic sentences. Regardless of whether the definite or the indefinite article is used, the sense of all three is something like the following:

Among the open set of pandas, including those long dead and those yet to be born, it is the case that their preferred diet is bamboo shoots.

Additionally, grammatically, generic sentences are typically in the simple present tense, the tense usually used for timeless truths.In passing it is perhaps worth noting a direct connection between generic sentences and modality: Since all generic sentences are implicitly introduced by the formulation "It is always the case that" there is a clear sense in which they occupy the endpoint of the scale of usuality-modality.

Now something that purports to be the truth may be totally false, or nonsense, or vile discrimination. Nevertheless, the speaker who utters such a sentence without irony is attempting to pass off their assertion as incontestable truth or wisdom, like a proverb or saying - proverbs themselves being, typically, generic sentences. Thus all the following are generic sentences:
1) The English are a nation of shopkeepers.
2) Scots are awfully careful with their money.
3) Every Welshman is an unsung Caruso.
4) The Irish can talk the hind legs off a donkey.

In each of these cases the speaker is declaring, as a general truth, something about individuals of a certain type - any individual of that type. Each sentence makes a claim of what is always true, or typically true. Clearly this can be an important distinction of that set of individuals. So generic sentences range from the scientifically a-social: Hydrogen atoms are lighter than oxygen atoms. to the stereotypical: Canadians say "about" all  the time. to the shaply partisan: "What really upsets Americans about the French is the fact that the latter is the more civilized nation.

As mentioned above producing a generic sentence which you intend to be interpreted ironically changes the situation subtly. For in such cases you are parading a proposition which might appear to be the bearer of a great truth, but now you intend the recipient to realize that it embodies a great foolishness or prejudice. Thus, in the emerging context we assume Jane Austen's narrator is intending irony when they announce, at the opening of Pride and Prejudies: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" Here is a further selection of generic sentences or longer passages with generic sentences woven into them, for your delectation:
"Slavery is so vile and misarable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper of Courage of our Nation, that 'his hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't. I therefore took (Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha a work of political theory  which, in broad terms, defended hierarchy and inherited authority) into my hands with all the expectation, and read it throgh with all the attention due to a Treatise, that made such a noise at its coming abroad, and cannot but confess myself mightily surprised, that in a Book which was to provide Chains for all Mankind, I should find nothing but a Rope of Sand, useful perhaps to such, whose Skill and Business it is to raise Dust, and would blind the People, the better to mislead them, but in truth not of any force to draw those into Bondage who have their Eyes open, and so much Sence about them as to consider, that Chains are but an ill wearing, how much Care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.      John Locke, opening of The First Treatice of Civil Government (1690)

Notice, among the passages above, how generic sentences may be embedded to different degrees and in different ways, in different texts. Thus, in the extract from Locke's First Treatise of Civil Government, besides the opening generic declaration (Slavery is so vile..that it is hard to conceive that an Englishman should plead for it) there are also more embedded generics, which take some effort for the reader to extract and reconstruct, such as: "A Treatce that makes such (unspecified) a noise at its coming abroad is due much expectation and attention" And later: "A Rope of Sand is useful perhaps for the raising of Dust and the Blinding of the People, but lacks the power to draw the perceptive into Bondage.

Generic sentences are more concensus-assuming than consensus-forming, they serve as the grounds upon which consensus or persuasion can be effected with regard to more specific policies and opinions.