研 究 生 毕 业 论 文
（申请硕士学位）
二○○八年五月
学 号：MG0509008
论文答辩日期： 2008年 5 月 18 日
指 导 教 师： （签字）
A Pragmatic Study of Modality Use in the Speeches at Press Conferences
by
Guo Yadong
Under the Supervision of
Professor Chen Xinren
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts
English Department
School of Foreign Studies
NanjingUniversity
May 2008
I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person or material which has to a substantial extent been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at any university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement has been made in the text.
Signature: ______
Name: Guo Yadong
Date: May 4, 2008
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis is accomplished under the inspiration and enlightenment of my respected supervisor, Professor Chen Xinren. I am very grateful to him, for the thesis would not be completed as scheduled without his careful reading, attentive guidance and elaborate revision.
I would also express my heartfelt thanks toProfessor Ding Yanren, Professor Zhang Ren, Professor Wei Xiangqing, Professor Ke Ping and Professor Don Snow, whose instruction benefited me a lot.
Last but not least, my cordial thanks go to my parents and my sister, who have always been providing me with the encouragement and financial support.
G.Y.D
ABSTRACT
A Pragmatic Study of Modality Use in the Speeches at Press Conferences
Guo Yadong
This thesis reports a study of modality use in press conferences with a specific focus on modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts from the perspective of the Linguistic Adaptation Theory. It attempts to figure out how often spokespersons tend to use modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts and what pragmatic functions their modality use may enact, and in what sense spokespersons’ use of modality is an adaptive behavior.
Altogether 15 transcripts of the press conferences of the U.S State Department collected from its official website were employed as the data source of this study. The 15 press conferences ranged from July 2, 2007 to September 28, 2007 involving three spokespersons. After careful screening, a total of 229 conversational turns and 519 modal expressions were picked out from the data. Detailed data analysis generated the following major findings:
1) Modality is very frequently employed in spokespersons’ speeches. Among the four types of modality in the collected data, modality of probability is the most frequent type followed by that of inclination, obligation and usuality. As for orientations of modality, modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts are used more subjectively than objectively; and when modals are used subjectively, explicit use accounts for a greater percentage, but if they are used in an objective way, then implicit use shows a higher frequency. The distribution of values goes in the order of low, median and high.
2) Modality use in different local contexts shows both similarities and differences. One of the major similarities is that in each local context, modality use of probability and usuality roughly show the similar tendency as the first finding describes. And the differences are: in terms of obligation and inclination, when briefing the unknown information, stating a position or giving a comment, or seeking self-defense, spokespersons are more likely to use the former rather than the latter, but when explaining or clarifying an issue, or presenting a plan, decision or future action, they use the type of inclination more often. As for orientation, in the first context, i.e. briefing the unknown information, subjective explicit modality is employed more frequently than the subjective implicit type, but in other contexts, the situation is just the opposite. Finally, modality of median and low are preferred in each context, but the distribution of high-value ones shows a difference: in the contexts of briefing the unknown information, stating a position or giving a comment, or seeking self-defense, high-value modality accounts for about 10% in each situation, but in explaining or clarifying an issue, or presenting a plan, decision or future action, it goes up to more than 20%.
Verschueren’s Theory of Linguistic Adaptation may help to better understand the spokespersons’ linguistic choices in modality use. According to the present study, one of the probable explanations for spokespersons’ modality use lies in their adaptation to the situation of press conferences and different local contexts within it.
By exploring the modality use in press conferences, this study enriches the study of modality and examines the Theory of Linguistic Adaptation in a new genre. In spite of its limitations on data collection and data analysis, it raises some suggestions for the follow-up studies on modality.
摘 要
本文通过调查分析美国“外交部”发言人在记者招待会中情态动词和情态附加语的使用情况，探索了外交语言中的情态词语使用情况，并从维索尔伦语言顺应理论的角度对调查结果作出了尝试性解释。
本研究从2007年7月2日到9月28日的发布会记录中任意选取了15篇。共收集话轮229个涉及519个情态动词或情态附加语，从三个纬度，类型、取向和量值加以分析，得出以下结论：
一、发言人的话语中大量使用了情态化的表达。总体而言，情态使用情况呈现如下的特点：
(1)从类别看，四类情态中发言人使用最多的是“可能性”，其次是“意愿”和“义务”，而使用频率最低的是“经常性”。从情态取向看，发言人更倾向于使用主观情态词来传达信息、表达观点。而且在使用主观情态词的时候，显性情态的使用要多于隐性情态。就情态量值而言，出现频率最高的是低量值的情态，其次是中量值，而高量值情态使用地最少。
(2)在文中划分的六种具体语境下，发言人的情态使用既有共同点又有不同点：共同之处在于“可能性”所占比重较大，“经常性”较小；“低量值”和“中量值”的分布在各语境中大体一致。 不同之处在于，在部分语境中，“义务”和“意愿”的使用互有高低。“高量值”在“解释或者澄清某一问题”和“陈述某一计划、决定或行动”两种语境中的使用频率要比其他语境明显增多。
二、本研究证明，发言人的情态选择是语言顺应的一种结果。该顺应既是对发布会这一大环境的顺应，也是对文中所提具体情景语境的顺应。在情态类型、取向以及量值的使用上，发言人都有意识无意识地对语境做出了顺应。
本研究将情态化表达的研究与语用顺应结合，探讨了新闻发布会中发言人对主要情态动词和情态附加语的使用情况，为情态化研究提供了新的论证，因而在一定的程度上丰富了该领域的研究。尽管本研究在数据收集以及数据分析方面还有一定的不足，但对今后情态和发布会语言的研究都会有一定的帮助。
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………..……………………………………………….…vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………....xi
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES…………………………………………………..xiii
Chapter One INTRODUCTION
1.1 Object of the Study
1.2 Need for the Study
1.3 Outline of the Thesis
Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW...... 5
2.1 Research on Modality Abroad...... 5
2.2 Research on Modality in China...... 7
2.3 Relevant Studies on Press Conference...... 8
2.4 Summary...... 9
Chapter ThreeTHE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK...... 10
3.1 Definitions of Modality...... 10
3.2 Modal Expressions to Be Included
3.2.1 Finite Modal Operators
3.2.2 Modal Adjuncts
3.3 Verschueren’s Theory of Linguistic Adaptation
3.3.1 Linguistic Choices
3.3.2 Variability, Negotiability, and Adaptability
3.4 Summary
Chapter FourMETHODOLOGY
4.1 Research Questions
4.2 Data Collection...... 20
4.2.1 Source of the Data...... 20
4.2.2 Procedures
4.3 Data Analysis
4.3.1 Analysis of Modality Use in General
4.3.2 Analysis of Modality in Each Discourse Context
4.4 Discussion
Chapter FiveRESULTS AND DISCUSSION
5.1 Modality Use in General
5.2 Modality in Different Local Contexts...... 30
5.2.1 Briefing the Unknown Information
5.2.2 Stating a Position or Giving a Comment
5.2.3 Explaining or Clarifying an Issue
5.2.4 Seeking Self-Defense
5.2.5 Presenting a Plan, Decision or Future Action
5.2.6 Making a Promise or Prediction...... 40
5.3 Discussion...... 41
Chapter Six CONCLUSION
6.1 Major Findings of the Study
6.2 Implications of the Study
6.3 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research
REFERENCES
List of Tables and Figures
Diagram 3.1Types of modality...... ………………………………………….…………11
Table 3.1 Orientations of modality…………………………………………………...... 12
Table 3.2 Values of modality………………………………………………………...... 12
Table 4.1 Information of the transcripts of the15 press conferences……………...……20
Figure4.1Stepsfor analysis of the variability of modality use in general………….....22
Figure 4.2 Steps to analyze modality use in each discourse context ………………...... 27
Table 5.1 The distribution of pragmatic functions…………………………………...... 29
Table 5.2 The four types of modality in press conference…………………….…….....29
Table 5.3 The distribution of four orientations…………………………………………30
Table 5.4 The distribution of three values……………………………………………...31
Table 5.5 The distribution of three variables in briefing the unknown information…...34
Table5.6The distribution of three variables in stating a position and giving a
comment……………………………………………………………….……...36
Table 5.7 The distribution of three variables in explaining and clarifying an issue……36
Table 5.8 The distribution of three variables in defending…………………………...... 38
Table 5.9 The distribution of three variables in presenting a plan, decision or future
action……………………………..……………………...………………...... 40
Figure: 5.1 The process of adaptation in spokespersons’ modality use……………...... 43
1
1
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
This chapter introduces the object of the present study, notably spokespersons’ use of modality in dealing with questions raised to them at press conferences. Then the researcher explains the need for this research. Finally, the structure of this thesis is presented.
1.1 Object of the Study
In accordance with Grice’s Co-operative Principle (CP) (Grice, 1989), communicators generally make every effort to make sure whatthey say is true, and is as informative as required, relevant and clear, but in reality, in many cases communication is not realized in that way. Press conference is one of these cases. In press conferences spokespersons’ remarks sometimes tend to be very “prolix”, which involve many modal expressions as shown below:
Ex1: I think that probably would give you the best idea of what kinds of issues might be subject to discussion.
To state the proposition in this sentence, the speaker uses four modal expressions, “I think,”“probably,”“would” and “might” which makes the expression heavily “modalized.”This language phenomenon is described as modality in linguistic field, referring to the area of meaning that lies between “yes” and “no”-- the intermediate ground between positive and negative (Halliday, 2000). A detailed definition is to be provided in Chapter Three.
The phenomenon of modality has been approached from different angles in the literature. It has long been an interesting topic for both philosophers and linguists. The present study aims to focus on two important categories of modality, modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts, to probe the phenomenon of modality use in the setting of political press conferences from a pragmatic perspective. In political press conferences, spokespersons, as public figures standing for their governments, have to pay special attention totheir choice of words. Their speeches are expected to employ more linguistic strategies which characterize the language in political conferences with distinct features (Oliver, 1952; Davison, 1975, as cited in Hu Gengshen & Wang Jing, 2001).As the example above shows, modality use is one of these strategies.
But political press conferencescan be varied, which means that they can be held in different specific settings for different purposes. To make the research scope clear, the present study is set in the U.S. State Department. By revealing modality use in this context, the present research attempts to figure out:
1) How often do spokespersons tend to use modal auxiliaries and modal adjuncts in their remarks?
2) In what discourse contexts do they use the modal expressions?Or what pragmatic functions do the modal expressions fulfill?
3) Why is modality presented in that way?
According to Halliday (2000), modality can be approached from three dimensions, namely types, orientations and values. Following this theoretical division, the author further examines modality use in press conferences under these three subcategories. And in addition to examining modality use, the study also seeks to explain the phenomenon from the theoretical perspective of linguistic adaptation (Verschueren, 2000).
1.2 Need for the Study
This study attempts to carry out an in-depth study on modality use in the setting of the U.S. State Department from the perspective of adaptation theory. It is motivated by the following considerations:
1) Modality is an important language phenomenon in both semantic and pragmatic studies (e.g.Lyons, 1977; Palmer, 2007; Hoye, 2005). And as Verschueren (2000, p.129) has pointed out, “modality is an inherently pragmatic phenomenon. It involves the many ways in which attitudes can be expressed towards the ‘pure’ reference-and-predication content of an utterance.”This inspires the author to discuss modality use from a certain pragmatic perspective--Linguistic Adaptation Theory. In the previous studies, researchers have already done this job in the contexts of political speeches, literature, academic writings and news reports (Yang Xinzhang, 2006; Wang Hongyang & Cheng Chunsong, 2007) but not yet press conference.
2) Media account for a great part of people’s daily life. Political press conferences can often be heard or seen through all kinds of media.As we have previouslymentioned, spokespersons’remarks in press conferences involve speakers’ special attention and their linguistic strategies. This makes their speech different from daily conversations and a good genre to study. So spokespersons’ remarks deserve some exploration. In the light of pragmatic theories on international communication, Hu Gengshen and Wang Jing (2001) present the typical features of press conferences and Lv Xihua (2006) investigate pragmatic vagueness in the language of press conferences of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of People’s Republic of China. So far, modality use in press conference has not yet been discussed.
These can explain why the present paper devotes itself to the study of modality use in press conferences of the U.S. State Department, and from which we can partly understand its significance.
1.3 Outline of the Thesis
The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One serves as an introduction to the object and need of the study. Chapter Two reviews some studies home and abroad related to modality. Chapter Three introduces the theoretical framework of this study,involving Halliday’s system of modality and Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory. Chapter Four describes the methodology of the study, including the sources of data, the procedures of data collection and the method of data analysis. Chapter Five reports the results of the study, discusses modality use in general and in specific local context from the theoretical perspective of linguistic adaptation theory. The last chapter, Chapter Six, summarizes the whole study and the major findings, discusses the implications and limitations of the study, and suggests some directions for future study.
Chapter Two
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter reviews the theories and empirical studies related to the present study. It includes three sections. The first section reviewssome relevant studies on modality home and abroad. The second section reviews somestudies on political press conferences. The last section serves as a brief summaryand illustrates the research gap.
2.1 Research on Modality Abroad
The study of modality started as philosophical and semantic enterprise. In recent decades, it has already become an interesting focus in the circle of linguistics. As Palmer(1986) said in the preface to the second edition of his typological survey Mood and Modality, “the surge of interest in modality studies has taken place since the publication of the volume’s predecessor in the mid-nineteen eighties” (Palmer, 1986, as cited in Hoye, 2005, p.1297). Since the mid-nineteenth eighties, a number of works concerning modality have been published. The trend can be noticed in Hoye’s statement:
On the evidence of the range and number of the works in the field, published over the intervening years, there can be little doubt that ‘modality’, as a unique and challenging field of enquiry into human thought and language, has truly come of age and that it has now achieved a status in linguistics scholarship which puts it on the par with, as Palmer remarks, ‘tense and aspect.’(2005, p.1297)
So no one can deny that study on modality is one of the fuci in present linguistic research. And the scope of these studies has been widening. But traditionally, linguists’ research on modality treats the modal auxiliaries as a sole focus. They argue that the study of modals may be regarded as synonymous with the study ofmodality itself for modality is mainly expressed by the modal auxiliaries (Palmer, 1986, as cited in Hoye, 2005). But in recent years, the research on this topic is undergoingchanges. Linguists now have realized the need to provide accounts of modality beyond the examination of modal auxiliaries. They tend to take into account other carriers of modal meanings such as modal lexical verbs, modal adjectives, or nominal modal expressions (Hoye, 2005).In line with this understanding the present study will not only examine modal auxiliaries but also modal adjuncts which are to be listed and explained in detail in Section 3.2.
To get a better review of the previous studies on modality, the author will first briefly introduce some pioneers’ research in this field.
Lyons (1977, pp.787-832), a famous semantist, proposes an important treatment of modality at a semantic level in his book, Semantics.The purposeof his research is to provide a theoretical account of how modality is expressed in any given language. His main concern is the logical characterization of necessity and possibility.
Palmer (1979, 1990, and 2007) is one of the best known linguists studying modality. His book Modality and English Modal Verbs, first published in 1979,makes an in-depth analysis of English modality and modal verbs. He discusses the various ways in which modality is grammaticalized in language, the range of its functions and its relation to other categories such as tense and aspect. One of his other contributions lies in his categorization of modality. He suggests that “realis” and “irrealis” are the more satisfactory terms for “non-modal” and “modal,” which are more and more popular in this field. In terms of the modal system, he agrees with Lyons’ classification that there are basically two kinds of modality, epistemic modality anddeontic modality. Based on these two major types, he proposes a more specific way of categorization which mainly refers to epistemic modality, evidential modality, deontic modality and dynamic modality. Under each category, Palmer (2007) illustrates corresponding linguistic phenomena with specific examples from different languages.
The studies mentioned above are mainly semantic. Among the follow-up studies, Halliday’s discussion adopts the perspective of functional grammar. In his book An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2000, p.88), Halliday draws a distinction between proposition and proposal.According to him, in verbal interaction, the participants may make statements, ask for questions, give commands or make offers. In statements and questions, certain information is given or asked for; in commands and offers, goods and services are exchanged. In the information exchange, the speaker makes a proposal. Propositions and proposals may appear in polar forms.In propositions, the positive pole is “it is so” (yes) and the negative pole is “it isn’t so” (no). In proposals, the positive pole is “do it” and the negative pole is “don’t do it.”Between the two categories of polarity there are intermediate values in name of modality. These intermediate values can be further divided and scaled (more details will be provided in Chapter 3).
2.2 Research on Modality in China
The research on modality in Chinacan be roughly reviewed in two dimensions. One is the exploration of the linguistic phenomenon of modality in Chinese, which started comparatively early. The other is the application of the foreign scholars’ theories in China, which came a little bit late.
In the first case, the main contribution comes from Chao Yuanren, Wang Li, and Lv Shuxiang. These famous scholars focus on the discussion of modal system of Chinese and their study of modality is basically typological. Each of them offers a set of categorization of Chinese modals according to their own understanding. Later, Zhu Yongsheng (1996, 183-209) influenced by Halliday’s functional grammar, carries out a contrastive study of the modal system of Chinese and English. His main contribution in the study lies in his theoretical generalization of the similarities and differences between modal system of English and that of Chinese. Meanwhile, enlightened by Halliday’s division of the value system of English modality, he divideseach category of Chinese modals into three scales, namely high, median and low.