A Semantic Study of the Polysemy of Modal Verbs in English Journalism

This study presents a semantic framework for explaining the multiple meanings of modal auxiliaries in English journalism. Modal verbs are used to express various meanings such as possibility, obligation, necessity, and permission. The study focuses on uncovering the ambiguity and vagueness of these modal verbs in English journalism, exploring their interrelated meanings and the process of polysemization. It aims to identify the frequency, usages, and meanings of modals in selected extracts from six fields of English journalism. The data is collected from British English journals in 2019, with 200 extracts taken from various sources. The study concludes that politics is the most frequently modal field, while literary criticism is the least modal field. The most commonly used modal in English journalism across all fields is “will” (including “would”), which indicates volition, willingness, prediction, predictability, and hypothetical meaning.