A corpus-based study of interpersonal metaphors of modality in English

ABSTRACT

This article conducts a COHA-based study on the diachronic and synchronic distributions of interpersonal metaphors of modality. The diachronic research finds that the metaphorization of modality occurs towards two directions, one being from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation, and the other being from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation. The synchronic research finds that interpersonal metaphors of modality are genre sensitive, but this sensitivity is determined by the shift from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation rather than from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation. The findings show that interpersonal metaphors of modality arise from the transcategorization within the semantic domains, and it is objectification rather than explicitation that is the characteristic feature of the relatively more technical non-fiction texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Corpus-based
• interpersonal metaphor
• modality
• modalization
• modulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ All the raw frequencies in this research were normalised to the frequencies of per million words for comparison.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by National Social Science Fund of China [17BYY185].