SEMANTIC FEATURES OF MODALITY IN RESEARCH ARTICLES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN INDEXED AND NON-INDEXED JOURNALS

Ton Nu My Nhat, Nguyen Thi Dieu Minh

Abstract


The present paper concerns the semantic features of modality markers in Linguistics research papers across two subsets, the indexed journals and the non-indexed English-medium journals published in Vietnam. The data is 30 Linguistics research papers from 2017 to 2019, selected from English for Specific Purposes and VNU Journal of Foreign Studies. The findings indicate a small disproportion in the frequency of modality between two groups of authors. Semantically, the preferred subtype in both groups is epistemic modality. Comparatively, the Vietnamese researchers are found to use more deontic and dynamic modality markers whereas the international writers tend to opt for epistemic modality. The issues unfolded from this study could contribute to a better understanding of modality in research papers in general and in those in the discipline of Linguistics in particular; the study has the practical contribution to promote the Vietnamese researchers in their endeavor to join the international academic community.


Keywords


Modality, epistemic modality, deontic modality, dynamic modality, research articles

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References


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