A Corpus Study of Brexit Political Discourse: Exploring Modality through Lexical Modals

This paper aims to analyse the lexical modals used in the political speeches given by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the final months of the Brexit process. This study explores whether lexical choice shows the politicians’ commitment to their constituents, particularly to determine which lex...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Almazán-Ruiz, Encarnación, Orrequia-Barea, Aroa
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2024
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Jaén
Repositório:RUJA. Repositorio Institucional de la Producción Científica de la Universidad de Jaén
OAI Identifier:oai:ruja.ujaen.es:10953/4379
Acesso em linha:https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249837
https://papiro.unizar.es/ojs/index.php/misc/article/view/9837
https://hdl.handle.net/10953/4379
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Modality
Lexical modals
Corpus-assisted discourse studies
Political discourse
Brexit
Descrição
Resumo:This paper aims to analyse the lexical modals used in the political speeches given by Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn during the final months of the Brexit process. This study explores whether lexical choice shows the politicians’ commitment to their constituents, particularly to determine which lexical modals each politician uses and which semantic implication(s) these modals convey. The study is descriptive-interpretative and uses the corpus-assisted discourse studies approach. It contributes to research on modality in the English language by examining parts of speech other than (semi)auxiliary modal verbs. As the corpus analysis shows, lexical modals are a prominent resource employed by politicians to present facts to their audience.