A Corpus-based Analysis Of Modality Markers AS Positive Politeness Strategies In English Discourse

This paper aims at investigating modality markers as positive politeness strategies in English discourse under the umbrella of corpus-based analysis. The two corpora of British and American ambassadorial speeches are compiled to provide data for a comparative analysis of politeness strategies. Modality markers, as expressions of the speaker's attitude in the utterance [6], are collected to analyse the speakers' politeness including both positive and negative strategies. (Negative politeness strategies will be discussed in the forthcoming paper.) The results of this research show that modality markers found in the research corpora are expressions of positive politeness strategies in terms of paying attention to hearers, expressing strong commitment, hedging, expressing solidarity with hearers, expressing encouragement, optimism and complimenting to mitigate the force of critical comments. Such markers occur with higher frequencies in the American ambassador corpus than in the British ambassador corpus. As such, it can be argued that American ambassadors are more positive than British ambassadors in conducting their politeness strategies