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Modality in Ghanaian and American personal letters
Author(s) -
OWUSUANSAH LAWRENCE K.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1994.tb00320.x
Subject(s) - modality (human–computer interaction) , variety (cybernetics) , modal verb , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , modal , feature (linguistics) , variance (accounting) , american english , reading (process) , index (typography) , natural language processing , computer science , mathematics , psychology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , chemistry , accounting , world wide web , polymer chemistry , business , programming language , verb
This paper reports a comparative study of the ways in which modality as a semantic feature is expressed in one nonnative variety of English and one native variety of English. A set of twenty‐two informal letters written by Americans were compared with another set of twenty‐two written by Ghanaians in respect of the distribution and use of modal words and expressions in the data. Given other differences such as a reading index for the American set of 11.9 grade level and 7.9 grade level for the Ghanaian set, it was hypothesized that the two varieties would make different use of modal words and expressions. The results of the analysis of the data using Analysis of variance (Anova) showed that there was no significant difference between the two sets of data in the distribution and use of modal auxiliary verbs. This finding has important implications for the description of native and nonnative varieties of English which is discussed in the paper.