Cross-cultural variation in the use of modal verbs in academic English
English academic writing has some specific characteristics that have been broadly defined by researchers. Nevertheless, English is undergoing constant modification as a result of being used as a lingua franca by international speakers. In this paper, my main objective is to determine whether languag...
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| Format: | article |
| Publication Date: | 2014 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) |
| Repository: | RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:riunet.upv.es:10251/78182 |
| Online Access: | https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/78182 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Variation Academic English Modal verbs FILOLOGIA INGLESA Inglés académico y profesional b2 15207 / G - Grado en ingeniería geomática y topografía 153 Fundamentos teóricos para el procesamiento de la lengua 32067 / W - Programa de doctorado en lenguas y tecnología 2145 Fundamentos teóricos para el procesamiento de la lengua 32067 / X - Máster universitario en lenguas y tecnología 2139 |
| Summary: | English academic writing has some specific characteristics that have been broadly defined by researchers. Nevertheless, English is undergoing constant modification as a result of being used as a lingua franca by international speakers. In this paper, my main objective is to determine whether language variation may be identified in cross-cultural communication when modal verbs of ability and possibility are used by speakers with different linguistic backgrounds. Furthermore, I would like to establish whether English writers tend to be more explicit than Spanish writers when both groups use English to communicate. The two corpora used in this study consisted of a set of fifty academic papers written in English by Spanish researchers and a set of fifty academic papers written in English by native English-speaking researchers. Both corpora were analysed to identify synchronic language variation in academic English when used by writers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The results showed that there are disparities in the use of possibility and ability modal verbs and the conclusion reached is that writers with dissimilar mother tongues express volition through modal verbs differently in international journals. |
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