The influence of genre and register on epistemic modality in spoken English: a preliminary study

Abstract

Many of the existing studies on the influence of genre and register on modality in English tend to approach the use of all kinds of modality in a concrete text-type. Contrariwise, this article concentrates on one kind of modality (the epistemic), and covers its use in a wide range of genres within spoken English. This task has been carried out with the aid of six naturally occurring texts of 5,000 words each. The quantitative study of the epistemic devices in these texts shows the high degree of dependency of the expression of epistemic modality on certain factors of genre and register: the overall purpose of the text and the individual purposes of the participants; the degree of planning; the need for accuracy; the topic of the text (field), and the social relationships between the participants (tenor).