E-catalog        

Библиогр.: с. 131-134

This paper aims to investigate Asian English learners’ preferred uses of the modal auxiliaries must and should by using both syntactic, topical and semantic annotation as well as various corpus linguistic tools. Our primary goal is to identify culture-specific motivations in the use of the two modal verbs and to demonstrate how those relate to the use of the two items in language produced by L1 speakers of English. We adhere to Hinkel’s study (TESOL Q 29(2):325–343. 1995, doi: 10.2307/3587627) and her findings as a springboard into our analysis. She suggested that differences in the use of modals between Asian English learners (AELs) and English L1 speakers may be culturally founded. We see the essential need to question and deepen the understanding of such implications, arguing that a count of tokens and their correlation with essay topics alone cannot be sufficiently informative. This is why we pursue a more in-depth approach which combines both corpus and pragmatic tools. First of all, we will conduct a contrastive analysis of quantitative data from two different learners’ corpora on the one hand, and three available corpora of contemporary English on the other hand. The goal of this analysis is to carve out certain AEL and/or English native speakers’ patterns in using must and should in their deontic and epistemic senses. Secondly, we will evaluate the AEL data in regard to whether and how they reflect cultural values different from the ones expressed in native English speech. Our findings show that, whereas ENSs and AELs alike do demonstrate a preference in the less face-threatening modal should over the more direct must in deontic uses, both must and should tend to be used more deliberately and more purposefully by AELs than by ENSs, who seem to apply them much more vaguely and polysemously. With regard to Hinkel’s major claim that AELs’ use of must and should reflects cultural values different from the ones expressed in native English speech, we were able to affirm this hypothesis. AELs in our datasets use must and should significantly differently than ENSs due to their alleged culturally intrinsic sense of togetherness and joint responsibility for their society.