Scaling deontic modality in parliamentary discourse

Abstract

In the paper we apply the scalarity principle to deontic modality and classify it into strong, medium and weak, with the ends of the spectrum suggesting the highest and the lowest degrees of imposition and necessity. We study the two extremes, the strong and the weak deontic modalities, in two parliaments – that of the UK and of Montenegro. We identify the linguistic devices used to express these types of deontic modality in both parliaments, measure their frequencies and then, having normalised these to 1,000 words of the corpus, we compare them in the two parliaments. We also discuss the functions of the individual devices in their context and seek patterns regarding their use. The results point to a substantial use of deontic modality in the genre of parliamentary debate and its significantly larger presence in the UK parliament. In addition, this type of modality was mostly expressed via verbs, commonly conjoined with the we-subject, so as to reduce the speaker’s responsibility in the imposition of obligation and save “face”.

Keywords

• strong deontic modality
• weak deontic modality
• scalarity