A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MODALITY MARKERS IN PAKISTANI AND US ENGLISH: EVIDENCE FROM GLOWBE

Abstract

Modality markers are very essential in the expression of the attitudes of the speaker, levels of certainty, compulsiveness, and interpersonal attitude. Their use is differentiated according to the varieties of English both in terms of the linguistic standards and socio-cultural inclinations (Palmer, 2001; Coates, 1983). Pakistani and American English have not been studied comparatively particularly through huge web-based corpora. This study determines the most commonly used markers of modality in Pakistani and American English and discusses the cultural, stylistic, and pragmatic issues that have been found to affect the difference in their application. A comparative method based on corpus was utilized with the GloWbE corpus and modal verbs, semi-modals and adverbial modals were examined. A quantitative frequency analysis together with the qualitative functional interpretation were used to investigate epistemic and deontic modality patterns of the two varieties. More common deontic modals (must, should) which have been showed by Pakistani English were associated with the hierarchical and collectivist norms, whereas American English was characterized by the prevalence of epistemic modals (might, could), which implies individualistic and mitigated expression. The study identifies that the modality markers are the grammatical and socio-cultural meaning and are used to represent specific communicative styles and cultural identities of Pakistani and American English.