The expression of deonticity : a contrastive view and implications for context- based teaching

Abstract

Corpus evidence has proven that expressions of modality are pervasive in present day English. After a brief theoretical introduction about modality in both languages and comparing how the latter is expressed in English and Spanish, we shall focus on examples of deontic modality from a semantic and pragmatic point of view. All the examples come from the BNC (British National Corpus) and CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) and involve language and potential action. When speakers/ writers order, promise or place an obligation on someone, they usually exploit linguistic forms such as directives, verbs of volition -including promises and threats- such as wish, punish, and modal verbs. These meanings are usually expressed with the same structures in Spanish but there are some differences. Attention will be paid to the following two issues, namely (a) Which modals are rising in both languages?. (b) Is written language being affected by colloquialization in the use of the modals? . The paper ends up advocating a context-based teaching of English deontic modals for Spanish students with practical suggestions for teachers