Open AccessModelling through Modality: (Re)shaping Brexit
Author(s) -
Aroa Orrequia-Barea,
Encarnación Ruiz
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
es review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2531-1654
pISSN - 2531-1646
DOI - 10.24197/ersjes.42.2021.127-153
Subject(s) - brexit , prime minister , modality (human–computer interaction) , opposition (politics) , obligation , politics , contingency , linguistics , modal , political science , meaning (existential) , law and economics , political economy , economics , epistemology , computer science , law , european union , philosophy , artificial intelligence , international economics , chemistry , polymer chemistry
Due to Brexit, the UK has been involved in a continuous political debate between Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition. This paper compares and analyses the modality used in a corpus consisting of their political speeches until Brexit day. Modal verbs are used to express ability, possibility, willingness, certainty, obligation and necessity. Politicians’ choice of certain words can be a useful tool to affect voters’ decisions and modality is a resource which reinforces that influence. The findings show remarkable similarities between both politicians and reveal that possibility is the most frequent meaning of the modal verbs used in the corpus.