Deontic modality in military english (in the textbooks of english campaign)

Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies Faculty of post-graduate studies -oo0oo Hoàng Thu Hiền Deontic modality in military english (in the text books of english campaign) Tính tình thái chức phận tiếng Anh quân Minor Program Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Hanoi, November, 2010 Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies Faculty of post-graduate studies -oo0oo Hoàng Thu Hiền Deontic modality in military english (in the text books of english campaign) Tính tình thái chức phận tiếng Anh quân Minor Program Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 602215 Supervisor: Dương Thị Thực Hanoi, November, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTENTS DECLARATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES PART I: INTRODUCTION I.1 Rationale of the Study I.2 Aims of the Study I.3 Research Questions I.4 Scope of the Study I.5 Significance of the Study I.6 Design of the Study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An Overview on Modality 1.1.1 Definitions of Modality 1.1.2 Types of Modality 1.2 An Overview on Deontic Modality 1.2.1 Definition 1.2.2 Uses of Deontic Modality 1.2.3 Ways of Expressing Deontic Modality 1.2.3.1 By Modal Auxiliaries 1.2.3.1.1 Syntactic Features of Modal Auxiliaries 1.2.3.1.2 Semantic Features of Modal Auxiliaries 1.2.3.1.3 Modal Auxiliaries in Expressing Deontic Modality 1.2.3.2 By Imperatives 1.2.3.3 By Others CONTENTS 1.3 General Characteristics of Military English 1.4 Some Characteristics of Campaign and 1.5 Summary CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Research Questions 2.2 Methodology 2.3 Data 2.4 Analytical Framework 2.5 Data Analysis, Findings and Discussions 2.5.1 Deontic Modality in Military English 2.5.2 Deontic Modality through Modal Auxiliary Verbs 2.5.2.1 Deontic Meanings of Can 2.5.2.2 Deontic Meanings of Could 2.5.2.3 Deontic Meanings of May 2.5.2.4 Deontic Meanings of Might 2.5.2.5 Deontic Meanings of Must 2.5.2.6 Deontic Meanings of Should 2.5.2.7 Deontic Meanings of Will 2.5.2.8 Deontic Meanings of Would 2.5.2.9 Deontic Meanings of Shall 2.5.3 Deontic Modality through Imperatives 2.5.4 Deontic Modality through some Modal Lexical Items 2.6 Summary PART III: CONCLUSION III.1 Conclusions III.2 Pedagogical Implications III.3 Limitations of the Research and Suggestions for Further Research REFERENCES LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Frequency and percentage of Deontic expressions in Military English Figure 1: Frequency and percentage of Deontic expressions in Military English PART I: INTRODUCTION I.1 Rationale of the study No one denies the importance of English language in the present time as the global language It is clear that English language has become more dominant around the world In some countries, it is used as the mother tongue and in other countries it is considered as the second language This makes English widespread On the other hand, English is the language of science and technology There is no doubt that English is the language of communication between people of different cultures It is also the language of computers that helps communicate with the people around the world through Internet technology and e-mail People who know English can deal with the Internet, which is regarded as information and communication revolution Being aware of the importance of English, Vietnamese learners try to master it A lot of Vietnamese people are learning English as the working language with foreiners In recent years, English has become a compulsory subject at schools, colleges and universities in Vietnam During the process of learning English, Vietnamese learners of English tend to face with a lot of difficulties as English belongs to a quite different language family, the Indo- European language family, which is an infectional language The word classes such as nouns and verbs usually change their forms to show grammatical categories Besides, they meet with many difficulties in studying its grammar, its sound system and its vocabulary, as well Among which its grammar plays an important role in the process of English learning Grammar is an essential element to build the language Communication becomes difficult without grammatical uses Therefore, undoubtedly, one‟s success in communicating in a foreign language partly depends on how to put words together according to certain grammar rules of the language With ten- year teaching experience at Military Science Academy (MSA), the writer realizes that grammar, in general and modality, in particular plays an important part in teaching and learning English, especially Military English That‟s why the writer attempts to study one of the difficult prolems facing Vietnamese learners of English, which is modality in English with the focus on Deontic modality in Military English The issue of modalities is probably one of the basic philosophical issues and has been addressed by many philosophers at many times The contemporary notion of modality is very broad It covers notions like necessity or possible truth and falsity, knowledge, provability and many others The original philosophical issue deals with modalities concerning truth-values – necessity and possibility In linguistics, modals are expressions broadly associated with notions of possibility and necessity Modals have a wide variety of interpretations which depend not only upon the particular modal used, but also upon where the modal occurs in a sentence, the meaning of the sentence independent of the modal, the conversational context, and a variety of other factors For example, the interpretation of an English sentence containing the modal 'must' can be that of a statement of inference or knowledge (roughly, epistemic) or a statement of how something ought to be (roughly, deontic) The following pair of examples illustrates the interpretative differences:  John didn't show up for work He must be sick  John didn't show up for work He must be fired The use of 'must' in the first sentence is interpreted as indicating a statement of reasoned conclusion: the speaker concludes John is sick, otherwise John would have shown up for work In contrast, in the second sentence, 'must' is interpreted as a statement of how something ought/need to be: the speaker is saying that because John didn't show up for work, John ought to be fired The use of a modal, particularly in cases like the first sentence above, contrasts subtly with not using a modal, as illustrated below:  John must be sick  John is sick The use of the modal in John must be sick is interpreted as indicating that some process of reasoning was used to arrive at the conclusion that John is sick The lack of the modal in John is sick tends to preclude such an interpretation, and is generally considered to be a statement of the fact (i.e., the speaker knows that John is sick) In other words, a speaker would typically not say John must be sick if the speaker knows that John is sick is true In long teaching practice, the writer has known all the basic uses of the modal auxiliary verbs, but can‟t touch their more deep gradation, and then further to study them This time, the meaning and purpose of the study are to let more and more learners observe deontic functions of modal auxiliaries as well as imperatives and the other lexical items in English, particularly in Military English I.2 Aims of the study The aims of this study are:  To study the different ways of expressing Deontic Modality in Military English  To analyze the elements that have influences on Deontic Modality in Military English  To indicate the uses of deontic modality in Military English I.3 Research questions The following questions are proposed in the current research:  What are the different ways to express deontic modality in Military English?  In what circumstances is deontic modality used in Military English? This study, in turn, hopes to contribute to enriching pedagogical proposals for teaching Modality in Military English to English major students at the MSA (Military Science Academy, page 1) I.4 Scope of the study The study is limited to investigating written deontic expressions in Military English expressed in the text books Campaign and This investigation is based on the manual corpus of 677 sentences possessing deontic meanings collected from the two text books Campaign and Also, to carry out this study, the writer has based on careful study, analysis and generalization on the material obtained from different sources I.5 Significance of the study The thesis hopes to contribute to the overall look at modality in general and deontic modality in Military English in particular The findings of the study, as a result, will contribute to language teaching as well as learning Military English at MSA I.6 Design of the study The present paper is organized in four main parts The INTRODUCTION is devoted to presenting the statement of the problem, the aims of the study, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, the research questions and the organization of the study The DEVELOPMENT is subdivided into two chapters: CHAPTER discusses the general theoretical background of the study and CHAPTER 2, the backbone of the thesis, comprises the methods of the study, data collection, analytical framework, data analysis, findings and discussion The CONCLUSION demonstrates the conclusions of this piece of research, pedagogical implications, and suggestions for further studies References are also included in this paper (46) Put on a field dressing (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:111) (47) Use your hands to apply pressure on the dressing for five to ten minutes (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:111) In the examples (390, (40), (41), (42), (43), (44), (45) the orders and commands are given to the soldiers by the commanders with authority The soldiers have strong obligation to or not to something In (46), (47), the instructions are given to the soldiers by the military doctors with expert power In my corpus, I can find 293 (43.28%) orders, commands, instructions expressed through the imperatives with deontic modal force The data analysis shows that in the army, imperatives are often used by the commanders with strong obligation over the soldiers when giving military missions because imperatives are the most direct and the strongest way of giving orders 2.5.4 Deontic modality through some modal lexical items (i) By Modal Nouns Some nouns that I can find in the books Campaign to express deontic modality in Military English are command, order, mission, allowance, permission, obligation, intent In the corpus, we can find 13 sentences (1.93%) using modal nouns to express deontic modality For example: (48)Your Battallion‟s intent is to isolate and destroy the enemy in order to secure the bridge for the brigade‟s movement north (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:92) (49) In the first wave, Company‟s mission was to move to the southern part of the old town, secure the area and stop the rebels moving south (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:37) Sentence (48) has the same meaning with Your Battallion will isolate and destroy the enemy in order to secure the bridge for the brigade‟s movement north when we use modal verb will to show intention In (49), the commander is talking about what Company must (ii) By Modal Adjectives Some adjectives used to denote permission, allowance, obligation in the army are found in the books Campaign: necessary, imperative, important, oblized… For example: (50) It is important to arrive on time because this makes a good impression (Clark and Altamirano 2, Altamirano 2, 2005:29) (51) It is not necessary to take a gift but these are always appreciated (Clark 2005:29) and Sentences (50), (51) are only suggestions and advice when the commander has weak obligation over the soldiers We can find 18 sentences (2.65%) using modal adjectives to give military rules in the corpus (iii) By modal disjuncts and adverbs Some modal adverbs and disjuncts likely, obviously, definitely, probably, certainly are found in the book Campaign to express the speaker‟s attitude We can find sentences (1.34%) using modal disjuncts and adverbs in the corpus For example: (52)The Navy is obviously secretive about future carrier technology but some developments are predictable (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:65) (53) Radar will almost certainly detect aircraft entering Fantasia air space… (Clark and Altamirano 2, 2005:43) In (52), (53), the commander not only gives the information but also shows his attitude using adverbs obviously and certainly (iv) By lexical verbs The verbs order, command, task, intend, allow, permit are used to talk about missions in the army 12 sentences (1.77%) using these verbs are found in the books Campaign to give military missions For example: (54) Your squadron was ordered to move from its assigned area 30 miles southeast (Clark and Altamirano 2, and Altamirano 1, 2005:53) (55) You are allowed to wear casual clothes when you are off duty (Clark 2005:116) In (54), it is the mission of the soldiers to move from its assigned area 30 miles southeast In (55), the commander gives the military rule to soldiers Soldiers can wear casual clothes when they are off duty In shorts, in Military English, beside modal auxiliaries and imperatives, deontic modality is sometimes expressed by modal disjuncts, adverbs, adjectives, nouns and some lexical verbs 2.6 Summary It is obvious in the previous part that deontic modalities can be expressed through modal auxiliaries can, could, should, may, might, would, will, shall and must and the imperatives as well as some other lexical items in Military English After scrutinizing both books, collecting and analizing 677 sentences possessing deontic meanings, we can see that in Military English, deontic modalities are mainly expressed through the imperatives (293 cases) Besides, we can use modal auxiliaries and some other lexical items to give deontic modalities Among modal auxiliaries, will is used the most (73 cases), and then must (68 cases), should (58 cases), can (50 cases), could (43 cases), whereas would, may, might and shall are rarely used Modal nouns, adjectives, adverbs, disjuncts and some lexical verbs are sometimes used to give military rules and missions The table and the figure below illustrate the expression of deontic modalities in Military English through modal auxiliaries, the imperatives and some lexical items and the percentage each of them accounts for in the corpus: Modal auxiliaries/ Imperatives/Others Can Could May Might Must Should Will Would Shall Imperatives Others Total Table 1: Frequency and percentage of Deontic expressions in Military English 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 Pe rmis s io n Pe rmis s io n/Re que s t withpoliteness Can Figure 1: Frequency and percentage of Deontic expressions in Military English According the table, it is undeniable that deontic modalities can be expressed through modal auxiliaries, imperatives and some lexical items However, data analysis shows us that in Military English, imperatives with deontic modal force are used the most to express commands, orders, instructions Therefore, the question emerged here is why imperatives are used so often The answer to this question lies on the Military regulation and discipline as well as the degree of deontic modal force of imperatives As being said before, giving and obeying commands, orders and instructions play an important role in Military regulation Especially in the battle field, understanding correctly and carrying out the order in time without any hesitation can bring the victory and avoid the unnecessary loss of soldiers‟ lives Furthermore, in the army, the orders are often given to the soldiers directly from the commanders All military commands and orders are spoken clearly and with authority sothat it is easy for the soldiers to understand and follow Besides, according to Palmer (1986), imperatives not only express strong obligations in Military circumstance that modal auxiliaries can‟t but also are the direct way of giving orders Because of these features, the imperatives are often used to express orders, commands and instructions in Military English compared to modal auxiliaries In addition, the data analysis also shows that in the Military English, deontic modality is often used by the commanders when giving the orders, commands, instructions, permission, military rules and missions to the soldiers with strong obligation PART III: CONCLUSION In this part, first, a summary of the whole study is represented Then, some drawbacks in teaching will be mentioned Besides, there are some suggestions and implications in pedagogy The last part is the limitations of the present study and some suggestions for further research III.1 Conclusions Within semantic theoritical framework, the current thesis has so far been carried out to answer two questions: one is to investigate the expressions of deontic modality in Military English and the other is the circumstances in which deontic modality is used Our findings show that deontic modality in Military English can be expressed by modal auxiliaries, imperatives and some other modal lexical items Among them, imperatives are the most often used (293sentences) because they are the most direct and strongest way of expressing orders and commands in Military English After that, modal auxiliaries are also used with 73 sentences of will, 68 sentences of must, 58 sentences of should, 50 sentences of can, 43 sentences of could, 19 sentences of would, sentences of may, sentences of might, sentences of shall found in the corpus Also, we can find modal nouns, adjectives, adverbs, disjuncts and some modal lexical verbs sometimes used by commanders to give military rules and missions These findings lay a foundation for us to learn that Deontic modality can be expressed by different ways In different contexts, we must use different expressions of deontic modality In daily life, people avoid using imperatives because they are considered the least polite However, in military circumstance, they are regarded as the most direct and strongest way of giving obligations; sothat, they are often used by commanders to give military rules, commands, orders and missions Moreover, in Military English, the commanders often use deontic modality to give orders, commands and military missions and the soldiers must obey the orders without hesitation In short, the current study, to a certain extent, made a significant contribution to research on key insights from semantics Hence, it is, hopefully, beneficial for English foreign language (EFL) teachers and learners in teaching and learning Military English III.2 Pedagogical Implications 2.1 Pedagogical implications for modal auxiliaries In order to use modal auxiliaries correctly, learners must know not only the forms but also the meanings of each modal, especially its functions in different contexts The biggest problem (EFL) students face with modals is their meanings Each modal can have more than one meaning and each meaning is a member of an inter-related system When a speaker chooses to use one modal, s/he is deciding not to use any of the other modals, thereby indicating the degree of emphasis (Byrd, 1995) "The problem lies neither in the surface positioning of modals nor in their wide range of meanings, but in associating the right modal with the right meaning." (Cook, 1978: 5) The meanings of the modal auxiliaries are difficult for EFL students to understand Many students are not aware of the subtle shades of meaning that are found within the meaning of a modal; for example, there are many layers to the meaning of can There are two ways to teach the meanings of the modal auxiliaries The most common way to teach modals is as a list Modals, when taught as a list, are presented like regular vocabulary which does not present the various ways each modal can be used For example: Modals as a List Modal Traditional definitions Present/Future can ability I can juggle can request Can I look at your costumes? Root can permission You can look at my costumes Root can possibility You can pet the lion if you want Root can I could juggle when Epistemic I was young I could juggle when Epistemic I was young On the surface, the information presented as a list like above appears to be sufficient for dealing with the modals; however, it is very unlikely that an EFL student will memorize every meaning and weigh each meaning before picking a modal Consequently, the student will learn one or two meanings for each modal and use those meanings of the modals exclusively Thus, a better way to teach modals is as a system This is illustrated below As shown above, memorizing the list of modals, without understanding the essence of modals as a system, is a futile effort A specific meaning, which cannot be conveyed in a list, is expressed by the modal that is chosen The modal that is chosen reveals the values and attitudes of the person speaking According to Byrd (1995), Modals, when teaching them in a system, follow a pattern going from weak to strong (please see examples below) It is more efficient to teach modals by placing the modals in context (e.g making guesses, giving advice, permission, request, etc.) The best way to show this is to give examples followed by class discussion Making Guesses A trapeze artist is walking on the high wire for the first time, two friends are watching weak Friend 1: Do you think he could fall? Friend 2: He may fall, but I doubt it The artist starts to wobble on the wire strong Friend 2: Take that back, he might fall Friend 1: He will fall if he doesn't stop wobbling Giving Advice A person wants to go to the circus and is talking to a friend who has already been to the circus Friend 1: You can go to the circus on either Tuesday night or Wednesday night weak Friend 2: You should go on Tuesday night because there is a special show with the lions strong Friend 1: You must go on Tuesday because you can pet the lions after the show Friend 2: I will go on Tuesday night 2.2 Pedagogical implications for imperatives Learners of Military English in MSA should bear in mind that imperatives are the most direct and least polite ways of making requests In daily life, the native speakers try to appear as unimposing as possible when making a request in English by being more indirect However, in Military circumstances, commanders often use imperatives for giving military rules, disciplines and missions with strong obligation and power over soldiers Learners should learn more about the cultural and contextual differences in using imperatives so that they can prevent themselves from being misunderstood or being unintentionally rude III.3 Limitations of the Research and Suggestions for Further Research This research is an attempt at describing and analizing the expressions of deontic modality in Military English It has been limitted to the written expressions in the two text books Campaign 1&2 This study does not claim to cover all the ways of expressing deontic modality in Military English Of course, there are still many points that remain untouched because of the limited scope of the study and require further investigation The further research may be conducted on intonation of imperatives, which is a rather promising topic Other research works can be carried out with other spoken ways of expressing deontic modality in Military English Problems of modality and deontic 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University Grammar of English, Longman 24 Quirk R et al (1985), A comprehensive grammar of English language, Longman 25 (Eds) Searle.J.R&M (1980), Speech act theory and pragmatics, Bierwisch, 26 Simon Mellor-Clark, Yvonne Barker de Altamirano (2004), Campaign English for the military, Macmillan 27 Sweetser E.E (1982), Root and epistemic modals: causality in two worlds, Berkeley Linguistics Society papers 8: 484-507 28 Sweetser.E (1990), From Etymology to Pragmatics, CUP 29 Yule G (1998), Explaining English Grammar, C.U.P ... to investigate the expressions of deontic modality in Military English and the other is the circumstances in which deontic modality is used Our findings show that deontic modality in Military English. .. study the different ways of expressing Deontic Modality in Military English  To analyze the elements that have influences on Deontic Modality in Military English  To indicate the uses of deontic. .. 2.5.2.4 Deontic Meanings of Might 2.5.2.5 Deontic Meanings of Must 2.5.2.6 Deontic Meanings of Should 2.5.2.7 Deontic Meanings of Will 2.5.2.8 Deontic Meanings of Would 2.5.2.9 Deontic Meanings of