EXPRESSING ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE EVENT
Modality
THE MEANING AND FUNCTIONS OF MODALITY
Modality deals with speakers’ attitudes towards a state of affairs. It is to be understood as a semantic category which covers such notions as possibility, probability, necessity, volition, obligation and permission.
Each of these modal concepts is realized by the core modals in two related clusters of meanings: the epistemic, based on the Greek word for knowledge, and the deontic, based on the Greek word for obligation. The epistemic meaning is used by a speaker to assess the possibility, probability or otherwise of a state of affairs, according to the speaker’s limited knowledge or belief. An unmodalized utterance, by contrast states a plain fact or assertion. Compare:
1 That man over there is the Queen’s bodyguard. (assertion)
2 That man over there must be the Queen’s bodyguard. (inference)
3 That man over there may /might/could be the Queen’s bodyguard. (possibility)
With the second cluster of meanings, the deontic, the speaker brings about an action, using modals to express different degrees of obligation, advisability or permission.
4 The opening ceremony starts in half an hour. (a plain assertion)
5 I must leave now. (presented as a binding, inescapable obligation)
6 You should/ought to /had better come, too. (presented as less binding, but desirable)
7 The rest of you may stay/can stay. (presented as permission)
Both epistemic and deontic meanings are linked by the concepts of necessity and possibility. Epistemic meanings tend to correlate with stative verbs, as in 2 and 3, and can take non-human subjects, including there (there must be some mistake). Deontic meanings tend to correlate with human subjects as agents of dynamic verbs, as in 5 and 6. Essentially, both are subjective: the speaker is involved; and by means of modality, speakers are enabled to carry out two important communicative functions:
• to comment on and evaluate interpretations of reality,
• to intervene and bring about changes in events.
A third type, dynamic modality, is less central, as it is concerned with ability and natural tendency, but also overlaps as regards permission (can) with epistemic modal may.
