Investigating Shades of Modality in an Autobiography, “If I amAssassinated”: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

This study investigated the attitudes and shades marked by the writer in an autobiography through the corpus expressions developed on modalities (i.e., boulmaic, deontic, epistemic, and perceptual). The study also put to the test the patterns created to examine modality across fiction genre. A corpus was created for this purpose and tagged using the Parts of Speech (POS) Tagger for analysis using AntConc 3.4.4.0. This analysis was then further interpreted using Simpson's (1993) model. It was discovered that the author used many modalities, such as (un)certainty, attitude, point of view, ability, possibility, and likelihood, to form the meaning in the autobiography. These features highlighted the text's persuasiveness, interest, and realism. By including these features, the autobiography was given positive and negative undertones that helped readers comprehend the author's perspective. In conclusion, the content seemed more upbeat than downbeat. The deontic and boulomaic modalities that indicated estrangement and uncertainty on the writer's part were used to mark the positive shade. Additionally, the use of the suggested patterns was successful in analysing the modality aspects using corpus techniques. They were suggested in the study as a paradigm for additional research.