Modality and the Law

更新时间:2023-08-14

【摘要】This paper discusses the importance of modal meanings in legal discourse.In Systemic Functional Linguistics,modal meanings are choices from the system of modality;they are a pervasive semantic domain with various grammatical realizations.Although an interpersonal meaning,realizing tenor,their congruent realization as modal auxiliary verb can "drift",via grammatical metaphor,to a realization as nominalization(such as must to obligation).Thus modal meanings can realize the field,or subjectmatter,of discourse.Legal scholars,in the discursive tradition of philosophy rather than linguistics,have called such nominalizations "fundamental concepts of legal relations".The paper compares a particular legal model of these relations,that of W.N.Hohfeld,with the SFL account of modality.It then discusses the volatility of modal realization,including the conflation of modal meanings,and the particular utility of such realization in specific examples of legal argument.This includes the use of compound and complex modalities,which does not readily translate into the modal choices of SFL.

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