LANGUAGE IN INDIA

A Socio-Semantic Study of 'Can' and 'Could' as Modal Auxiliaries in English

Prashant Mishra, M.A., M.Phil., Ph. D.

Abstract

Modals cover a large number of semantic categories like request, offer, suggestion, compulsion, permission, threat, promise, prediction etc. These semantic categories cover a wide range of socio-cultural situations and perform a number of sociological functions ranging from a simple assertion of facts to the expression of commands, threats etc. Besides performing various communicative functions like requests, denials, offers, threats, promise, a wide range of semantic concepts covered by modals perform so many illocutionary goals.

Modals perform so many illocutionary acts and social goals by assuming to follow pragmatic principles and play an important role in an interpersonal rhetoric. The main aim of a teaching programme is to develop communicative competence in the learners by equipping them with the knowledge of using a language appropriately in various socio-cultural situations.

In most of the studies, formal and semantic criteria have been used to the study of modals. However, modals are highly ambiguous and cannot be interpreted in isolation without reference to socio-pragmatic considerations.

Hence, in the present paper, socio-semantic approach which takes into consideration non-linguistic details relating to socio-cultural situations and conventions, the goals, the topic, the shared interest and experience of the interlocutors has been used to study 'can' and 'could' as modal auxiliaries in English.

The utterances taken from the one act-plays of English have been analyzed on a six point scale(i) Meaning (ii) Illocutionary Act (iii) Illocutionary Function (iv) Attitude of the speaker (v) Illocutionary Goal (vi) Politeness Principles. The study of 'Can' and 'could' as modal auxiliaries reveals that modals are not only multi-propositional but are also multi-functional.

Key Words: Modals, Socio-Semantic, Illocutionary Act, Interpersonal Rhetoric, Politeness Principles

Framework: Socio-Semantic

It is widely known that language cannot exist in a vacuum. It is vitally related to the society from which it springs. Any description of language outside its socio - cultural context is inadequate. The earlier approaches to the study of language, including Structuralism and Transformational Generative Linguistics, were primarily formalistic in nature. Both these approaches completely kept out of their study the social aspect of language.

The socio-semantic approach is an approach to discourse which employs sociological criteria for analyzing various linguistic categories like modals etc. keeping in view various social situations in which they are used and in which they are socially significant.

The socio-semantic approach (Halliday 1970) based on Hallidayan linguistic model takes into consideration non-linguistic details relating to socio-cultural situations and conventions, the goals, the topic, the shared interest and experience.

This approach encompasses into its study the whole sentence and has been concerned with the socio-cultural contexts which influence the content of these sentences considered for study. Socio-semantic approach, thus, is more situation specific than the semantico-grammatical approach which takes into account grammatical aspects and studies how various semantic options are represented by means of certain grammatical categories. In a socio-semantic approach, the criterion is to identify various situations which are socially significant and which influence our communication system.

Since human communication system involves transmission of message from the source to the receiver and message involves meaning that the speaker wants to convey to the receiver, socio-semantic approach holds that meaning cannot be expressed in a vacuum. Meaning is always influenced by various socio-cultural situations that govern our lives. Man is a social being and is a part and parcel of society to which he belongs; his utterances are often shaped by social factors and not the grammatical or linguistic ones.

Since Modals present various semantic options like request, threat, compulsion, duty and desirability, possibility etc., the socio-semantic approach studies these semantic options in relation to the various contextual situations.

The aim of the present paper is to explore how 'can' and 'could' which imply offer, ability, request for permission and possibility is influenced by interplay of socio-cultural factors in English. Since language functions in a socio-cultural setting, it seems to me that the semantic notion of modality should be dependent on socio-cultural factors rather than on syntactic or formal ones. A socio-semantic framework may provide additional support to formal i.e. morphological and syntactic criteria.

Need for the Present Approach

Modals are used in various socio-cultural situations. In fact, these socio-cultural situations provide the background that determines the use of modals in various languages. In languages, words perform multiple functions and different functions of words are governed by different contexts in which they are uttered.

The speech act approach developed by Austin particularly "focuses upon knowledge of underlying conditions for production and interpretation of acts through words" (Shiffrin 1994:6). Austin believes that a person utters a sentence not only to convey something but also to perform some act. When a person utters a sentence like - 'I promise to come back within a week', he is not making a simple statement but is performing the act of promising. According to Austin, a complete account of the meaning of a sentence cannot be restricted to semantic analyses as these are usually understood and that they must be extended to include information about the kind of speech act involved in uttering the sentence - that is, its illocutionary force" (Boyd and Thorne 1969:58).

Several linguists including Household (1971), Boyd and Thorne (1969) and Lyons (1977) have acknowledged the fact that modals possess illocutionary force and to confine the study of modals only to semantic and formal analysis without taking into consideration their illocutionary potential will be a partial study. For example, 'He will come on Monday' can be analyzed as 'I predict he comes on Monday' and 'He may come on Monday', can be analyzed as 'I guess he comes on Monday'. In the above examples, modals 'will' and 'may' are related to the illocutionary force of the speaker's mental acts of predicting and guessing respectively.

Halliday (1970) regards modality an important element of the semantics of personal participation. He believes that it is derived from the 'interpersonal' function of language.

Modality is a form of participation by the speaker in the speech event (Halliday 1970). It includes speakers "comments on assessment of what they are saying -- that is to express their personal view of the situation" (Verma 1978:196).

Any discussion of modality will remain superficial without a consideration of the notions of speech act and illocutionary force which are governed by various speech situations. If we confine the study of modals to the formal and semantic analysis of the data available to us and ignore the context of the utterance, it will not help us in understanding the intended meaning of the speaker in making his utterance. The addressee will be able to decode the semantics of the modals fully well only if he is familiar with the context of the utterance. The context of the utterance will be of great aid to him in comprehending the communicative meaning intended by the speaker in producing his speech act.

Klinge (1993:318) rightly argues, "The modals in isolation have no paraphrasable meaning and rely on cotext and context for a meaning. Cotext and context thus become determining factors in the choice of a paraphrase, and it follows that cotext and context require an explicit place in the theoretical framework."

Linguists like Palmer and Lyons are of the view that sentences containing modals like 'may' and 'must', if interpreted in isolation, lead to ambiguity as these modals can be interpreted in more than one way. However, they can be saved from ambiguity by interpreting the situation in which they are uttered by the speakers.

Hypothesis, Data Collection and Methodology

Our main aim in the present paper is to investigate the uses of 'can' and 'could' as modal auxiliaries in various socio-cultural situations. In this connection, we have made the following assumptions:

a. Modals represent various semantic categories. However, these semantic categories are influenced by the interplay of various socio-cultural factors. Grammatical and semantic analyses are inadequate to interpret the actual intention of the speakers.

b. Modals are highly ambiguous. They cannot be interpreted in isolation and without reference to the socio-pragmatic considerations. The illocutionary force of the utterance cannot be brought out and understood without the aid of socio-pragmatic factors. To remove ambiguity, help has to be taken from the context and the socio-cultural situations.

c. To investigate our hypothesis, we have collected data from the one-act plays written over the last fifty years in English. The plays selected to collect the data and support our point of view have been spread over a period of the last fifty years from 1950 to 2000. We decided to collect the data from various one-act plays as this saved us from the exercise of inventing and deliberately constructing the data which are generally separated from the context.

d. We have proposed to analyze the data on a seven - point scale using the following socio-semantic parameters: i. Meaning. ii. Context of an utterance iii. Illocutionary Act. iv. Illocutionary function. v. Attitude of the speaker vi. Illocutionary Goal. vii. Politeness principle.

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