Masarykova univerzita
ag.x)Gender-Specificity and Modality
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- Boosters Hedges
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- Total 263 106
ag.x)Gender-Specificity and ModalityAs regards gender-specificity and modality, the corpus indicates that female politicians employ modal forms more frequently than male politicians. Females produced 1,124 instances of modal expressions, while males utilized 1,079 modal expressions. Concerning particular types of modality, deontic necessity, epistemic attitudinal modality, epistemic necessity, and deontic possibility are types occurring more frequently in female speakers. Conversely, epistemic possibility and circumstantial possibility are more frequent in male politicians. The exact numbers of occurrences of all types of modality by male and female speakers may be found in Section 9.9. Even if the corpus of political interviews is extensive, my research into modality reveals that it is very difficult to make generalizations about gender-specificity in connection with the concept of modality. Interpretation of the data is difficult since it is necessary to focus not only on the types of modality but also on the types of linguistic means used to express these types of modality. At first, modalities produced more frequently by male politicians than by females will be evaluated, then the focus will be on modalities utilized more frequently by females. Male politicians produced more instances of epistemic possibility than females. Modal expressions of this type of modality that are used by males more frequently than by females are I mean, may, possible, probably, and possibly. By contrast, I think, I don’t think, might, maybe, perhaps, apparently, and likely are means of epistemic modality preferred by females (see Section 9.9.1). A typical feature of this type of modality is subjectivity because the speaker presents his/her opinions from his/her own personal perspective. Politicians use this feature to stress their views and beliefs to influence their voters. Subjectivity relates to the pragmatic function of boosting the illocutionary force. If the linguistic means of epistemic possibility pragmatically function as hedges, they express speaker’s uncertainty and assumption about the proposition. Table 41 demonstrates pragmatic functions of epistemic possibility employed by male and female politicians in the corpus. As is evident, boosting devices are much more frequent than hedging devices in both genders. From this it follows that both genders aim at emphasizing their opinions and expressing their own beliefs and thus they want to influence the audience. Indeterminacy expressed by hedges does not manifest itself to such a great extent by this type of modality. The reason is that neither male nor female politicians want to look uncertain in front of their audience.
Table : Pragmatic Functions of Epistemic Possibility Another type of modality that occurs more frequently in males is circumstantial possibility. However, the difference between male and female speakers is not significant. It was produced 50 times by males and 48 instances appeared in females. This modality expresses that an event may happen or may not happen, depending on particular circumstances. This modality indicates detachment of the speaker from the proposition and irresponsibility for it. The type of modality which shows a clear difference between male and female speakers in the frequency of occurrence in the corpus is deontic necessity. It is more frequent in females. As shown in Section 9.9.2, females produced 225 instances of the modal forms have to/have got to and must, and only 86 instances of should or ought to. Males produced 169 instances of have to/have got to and must, and 85 instances of should or ought to. As already mentioned, deontic necessity expressed by must or have to is stronger than that expressed by should. This may signal that female politicians by using stronger modal forms want to sound authoritative and want to assert themselves in the area of politics. They may attempt to show that they are equal partners to their male counterparts and that they should not be undervalued. Epistemic attitudinal modality is another type of modality that occurs more frequently in females. It is, again, as epistemic possibility, connected with expressing subjectivity of the speaker to the proposition. Modal means of this modality, the adverbs really, frankly, and actually, appear in pragmatic functions of boosting and hedging. As indicated in Table 42 below, females used more boosting devices than males, which shows a high degree of subjectivity and involvement with their propositions. By contrast, males used more hedging devices within this type of modality, which indicates a higher degree of hesitation of these speakers.
Table : Pragmatic Functions of Epistemic Attitudinal Modality Epistemic necessity is the third modality used more frequently by female speakers. It is expressed by linguistic means that pragmatically always function as speaker-oriented boosters. Their function is to express assurance of the speaker about the proposition expressed. This fact again confirms the claim that pragmatic and epistemic modal functions express very similar meanings since these expressions, although primarily used modally, also express assurance of the speaker. When using these modal expressions, female politicians aim at asserting themselves in front of their audience and looking as sure and confident speakers. Deontic possibility appears more frequently in female speakers, however, as demonstrated in Section 9.9.6 above, and as already explained, it is not so frequent in the corpus since giving permission is not typical of this genre of spoken discourse. In sum, this analysis of modality shows that even if some types of modality signal detachment (circumstantial possibility and deontic necessity) and indeterminacy (epistemic possibility), it is subjectivity that prevails in both male and female politicians. This is another proof of speaker’s involvement in the genre of political interview. Politicians want to influence the viewers and persuade them that they are the best people to perform the political positions they hold. Lexical means of epistemic types of modality function pragmatically as boosting or hedging devices, depending on the context and this research shows that their modal and pragmatic functions are in agreement. From these results it follows that a modal and a pragmatic function express very similar meanings. In the last section of the chapter dealing with modality, modal combinations in the corpus will be examined.
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