Dissertation project

Chinese English: a corpus-based sociolinguistic investigation into modals of obligation and necessity

The modal verb system in varieties of English as a Native Language (ENL) has been extensively studied, as evidenced by a large number of synchronic analyses such as Ehrman (1966), Hermerén (1978), Coates (1983), and Collins (1991).  

Over the last two decades, academic attention has increasingly shifted to the modal verb system in varieties of English as a Second Language (ESL). Nelson (2003) is the first corpus-based study in the area. He examined modals of obligation and necessity (must, should, ought to, need to, have (got) to) in spoken British English (BrE), New Zealand English (NZE), East African English (EAfE), Indian English (IndE), Jamaican English (JamE), and Hong Kong English (HKE), based on their ICE components. The four ESL varieties are marked with a comparatively higher frequency of deontic must. Another early corpus-based study is Nkemleke (2005), where he examined the frequency and semantics of must based on a corpus of Cameroon English (CamE) printed texts. CamE is marked with a lower proportion of epistemic must than BrE, whilst BrE speakers rarely use must to express instruction.

More recent studies include Collins (2009), Biewer (2011), Collins and Yao (2012), and Hansen (2018). Among them, Hansen’s (2018) adopted a sociolinguistic view by examining the relation between the use of modal verbs and speaker’s age and gender. She also designed questionnaires to study IndE speakers’ attitudes toward different varieties of English and their perceptions on different modal variants in marking obligation and necessity (2018: 119-122). The sociolinguistic findings are quite fruitful. First, the variationist studies suggested that young female speakers in both IndE and HKE are leading the rise of the popularity of have to in spoken registers, which echos Labov’s (2001: 292) argument that female speakers tend to lead the innovative language change. Then, the questionnaire studies reported that half of IndE speakers perceive the use of deontic must as “friendly” or even “very friendly”.

At present, empirical studies on the modal verb system in varieties of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) remain scarce. Questions related to how modal verbs are used in EFL varieties, and whether their usages differ from that of ENL and ESL varieties are rather unexplored. This research aims to fill in the gap by investigating modals of obligation and necessity in Chinese English. The goals for the project are to exhibit the usage patterns of modal verbs in Chinese English, to provide insights into regional variation among ENL, ESL, and EFL varieties, and to inform our understanding of factors that contribute to the differences.