功能语言学与英语教育语篇.pdfVIP

Style and the Representation of Modal Meanings Xinzhang YANG College of Foreign Languages and Cultures Xiamen University 2012-4-30 Introduction  Judgment of good style is always very vague. Teachers can judge someone’s writing as ‘lucid’, ‘blunt’ or ‘objective’, but it is unclear how these features are realized in wording.  Teachers can give to students suggestions like ‘write naturally’, ‘write nouns and verbs’, but we do not know how.  How to judge and produce a stylistically acceptable text becomes a problem for both students and teachers. 2012-4-30 Introduction  Studies in style often focus on the appropriateness of style in relation to context.  From the perspective of stylistics, structures do not have free variation. Each structure has its own stylistic meaning.  Modality is the range of meaning that holds between yes and no, and is a means for the speaker/writer to expresses his attitude to and judgment of assertions and proposals.  In language, modal meanings are realized by various modal devices. 2012-4-30 Style  Style: the different ways to say the same thing.  It is mainly studied with a focus on appropriateness that is mainly related to the situational context. 2012-4-30 Registser  To Wales (2006:213) , the essence of style is ‘distinction,’ ‘variation,’ or ‘choice.’  Every linguistic choice that is made is determined by a wide variety of contextual considerations, such as the genr