The use of english modals by first-year students of the department of anglophone studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION..................................................................................................................ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT....................................................................................................iii

LIST OF CHARTS.............................................................................................................iv

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE: THE REVIEW OF LITERATURE 3

I.1 - THE ORIGIN AND HISTORICAL VAGARIES OF THE TERM «PRAGMATICS» ACCORDING TO LEVINSON ( 1983) 3

I.2 - DEFINITION OF PRAGMATICS 5

I.3 - PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE CONTEXT 6

I.3.1 -Pragmatic Reference 7

I.3.2 - Presupposition 7

I.3.3 - Implicatures 8

I.3.4 - Inference 9

I.3.5 - Speech act theory 9

I.4 - THE CONTEXT OF SITUATION 11

I.5 - MODALITY 12

I.5.0 Introduction 12

I.5.1 - Defining modality 14

I.5.2 - Forms and uses of modals 18

I.5.2.1 - The grammatical forms of English modals 19

I.5.2.2 - Deontic use of modals 20

I.5.2.2.1 - Request 21

I.5.2.2.2 - Permission 23

I.5.2.2.3 - Advisability 24

I.5.2.2.4 - Necessity 25

I.5.2.2.5 - Obligation 25

I.5.2.3 - Epistemic use of modals 28

I.5.2.3.1 - Possibility 29

I.5.2.3.2 - Probability 30

I.5.2.3.3 - Certainty 31

I.5.2.4 - Epistemic use versus deontic use of modals 33

CONCLUSION 38

CHAPTER TWO: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 38

II.1 - APPROACH 39

II.2 - DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES AND INSTRUMENTS 40

II.3 - SAMPLING 41

II.4 - PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN THE FIELD AND SOLUTIONS PROVIDED 42

II.5 - DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURE 43

CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS FROM OUR DATA ANALYSIS 44

III.1 - FINDINGS FROM THE IDENTIFICATION ITEMS 45

III.2 - FINDINGS FROM THE EXPERIMENT 46

III.2.1 - Meaning Recognition 46

III.2.1.1 - Scores and comments 46

III.2.1.1.1- Scores of the deontic meaning recognition and comments 46

III.2.1.1.2 - Scores of the epistemic meaning recognition and comments 47

III.2.1.1.3 - Scores of the deontic or/and epistemic meaning recognition and comments 47

Chart 6: - Scores of the deontic or/and epistemic meaning recognition and comments 48

III.2.1.1.4 - Scores of the test on recognition and comments 48

III.2.1.1.5 - Comments on scores 49

III.2.1.2 - Distribution of meanings to modals 50

III.2.1.3 - Students' modality tendency 52

III.2.1.4 - Confusion between the kinds of meanings 53

III.2.1.5 - Confusion between the types of meanings 55

III.2.1.6 - Comments on recognition 56

III.2.2 - Modal Production 57

III.2.2.1 - Scores and comments 57

III.2.2.1.1 - Scores of the deontic meaning production and comments 57

III.2.2.1.2 - Scores of the epistemic meaning production and comments 58

III.2.2.1.3 - Scores of the deontic or/and epistemic meaning production and comments 58

III.2.2.1.4 - Scores of the test on production and comments 59

III.2.2.1.5 - Partial conclusion on scores of production 60

III.2.2.2 - Distribution of modals to meanings 61

III.2.2.3 - Use of modals to express ambiguity 63

III.2.2.4 - Confusion between modals 64

III.2.2.5 - Students' preferred modals 66

III.2.2.6 - Comments on production 67

III.2.3 - Partial conclusions and verification of the hypothesis 68

III.3 - PROBABLE SOURCES OF MODAL MISUSE AND MISUNDERSTANDING 70

CHAPTER FOUR: RATIONALE OF MODALS TEACHING AND LEARNING AND SOME SUGGESTIONS 73

IV.1 - THE RATIONALE OF MODALS TEACHING AND LEARNING 73

IV.2 - SOME SUGGESTIONS IN TEACHING MODALS 74

IV.2.1 - Explicate the context of the use of modals 74

IV.2.2 - Explain the differences between the types of meanings 75

IV.2.3 - Explain the differences between the kinds of meanings 76

IV.2.4- Encourage the use of modals 76

IV.2.5- Further suggestions 76

CONCLUSION 78

BIBLIOGRAPHY 80

APPENDIX I: FORMS OF MODALS 82

APPENDIX II: TESTS ON MODALS 85

APPENDIX III: CORRECTION OF THE TESTS 91

APPENDIX IV: PRACTICE 97

INTRODUCTION

This study deals with the deontic and epistemic uses of the English modals in the writings of first year students of the department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Ouagadougou. The deontic use refers to modals expressing permission, advisability, necessity and obligation; whereas the epistemic use refers to modals expressing possibility, probability, and certainty.

Our interest in this study was aroused by our notice that the first year students in the department of Anglophone Studies rarely use the English modals in their speech; those who use some modals do so often inappropriately. Why is that so? Do students master the deontic and epistemic uses of English modals?

Many linguists and grammarians such as Leech, Wardhaugh, Celce - Murcia and Larsen - Freeman implicitly disagree with the idea that students master the meaning of modals since they claim that the meanings of modals are almost incomprehensible, and even difficult to teach. Leech (1987:71) is very aware of these difficulties as he asserts:

«Many pages, chapters, books have been written about the modal

auxiliary verbs in English. What makes it so difficult to account for

these words (which may be called «modal auxiliaries» or «modals» for short)

is that their meaning has both a logical and a practical (or pragmatic) element.»

Leech's view is shared by Wardhaugh (2003:56), who recognizes that even if it is possible to make a distinction between the epistemic use and the deontic use of modals, the distinction is not always clear in practice. He sustains that «the modal verbs are complicated in the kinds of meanings that they express».

Other grammarians sceptical about the correct use of modals by learners are Celce-Murcia and Larsen- Freeman (1983:83). They worsen the picture by placing the difficulties at teachers' level. Addressing their book to teachers, they make this warning: «An additional problem in the teaching of modals arises when you attempt to convey to your ESL/EFL students the meaning of modals, periphrastic modals, and modal-like forms». If teachers have problems to convey their EFL students the meaning of modals, no one would logically expect from students to handle the use of modals, because modals have both deontic meanings and epistemic meanings.

Do students of first year of the department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Ouagadougou make any difference between the epistemic uses and the deontic uses of modals? That is the question we shall try to answer in this piece of research.

We shall assume that all the students we shall test are English as a Foreign Language learners, that they attended all the course of English at secondary school, and that they will answer our questions fairly. We hypothesize that students will misuse modals and misunderstand their meanings, because modals convey both deontic meanings and epistemic meanings, which they are not clearly aware of.

We shall clarify the meaning of modals and then, test students through written exercises to know whether the hypothesis should be confirmed or invalidated.

Our research questions are the following:

- How well do students understand the meanings of modals?

- How appropriately do they use them?

- What is their modality tendency?

Our work is divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with the review of literature on pragmatics and modality in order to present modals in their linguistic milieu. The second chapter is about the research methodology, that is, how we collected and processed our data. The third chapter displays the finding from our data analysis. The last chapter provides some suggestions which, hopefully, may be useful for teachers, as they could utilize them to improve their teaching of English modals for communication, for students as they will be made aware of their strengths and weaknesses in the use and understanding of English modals, and finally, for researchers, because we intend through our piece of research to enlighten more the issue of EFL learning.

CHAPTER ONE: THE REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The purpose of this chapter is, firstly, to make an overview of pragmatics as a linguistic science by giving its origin and historical vagaries, its definition and that of some related key terms. Secondly, this chapter explores definitions of modality and discusses the meanings of modals.

I.1 - THE ORIGIN AND HISTORICAL VAGARIES OF THE TERM «PRAGMATICS» ACCORDING TO LEVINSON ( 1983)

Crystal (1996:301) recognizes that pragmatics is not easy to define, for «no coherent pragmatic theory has been achieved because of the variety of topics it has to account for». The term pragmatics is as vague as Searle, Kiefer and Bierursh suggest in Levinson (1983:6) «pragmatics is one of those words (societal and cognitive are others) that give impression that something quite specific and technical is being talked about when often in fact it has no clear meaning». They say that pragmatics deals with all aspects of language use, understanding and appropriateness.

The philosopher Charles Morris (1938:6) is reportedly^1(*) said to be the «father» of the term pragmatics in its modern usage. He sought to establish a general shape of a science that studies signs: semiotics. Morris divided semiotics into three branches: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. He defines syntax as the study of «the formal relation of signs to one another», semantics as the study of «the relation of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable», and pragmatics as the study of «the relation of signs to interpreters». Each branch consisted of pure studies, dealing

with the construction of the relevant metalanguage, and descriptive studies, applying the metalanguage to the description of specific signs and their usages.

It is the analytical philosopher and logician Carnap who narrowed the scope of pragmatics to the study of the users of the language. He explains the trichotomy of semiotics as follows:

« If in an investigation explicit reference is made to the speaker,

or to put it in more general terms, to the user of the language,

then we assign it [the investigation] to the field of pragmatics ...

If we abstract from the user of the language and analyze only

the expressions and their designate, we are in the field of semantics.

And, finally, if we abstract from the designate also and analyze only the

relations between the expressions, we are in (logical) syntax.»

(Carnap, 1938:2 in Levinson, 1983:2-3)

Carnap's definition of pragmatics coincides with Morris's (quoted in Levinson, 1983) descriptive semiotics, and Carnap finds a pure pragmatics which he considered to deal with concepts like belief, utterance and intention and their logical inter-relation.

Sayward (1974) quoted in Levinson (1983) noticed that Morris's and Carnap's usages of the term pragmatics was ambiguous because the particle «Oh» in English could be analyzed pragmatically as well as semantically. Therefore, defining pragmatics as «the study of aspects of language that required reference to the users of language» will limit the scope of pragmatics to the study of indexical or deictic words like the pronouns I and you, because in natural language they are used to refer to the users of the language. Yet, it is this definition that Montague (1968)^2(*) developed.

To summarize, Morris defined pragmatics as the study of psychological and sociological aspects involved in language, whereas Carnap defined it as the study of concepts that make reference to users. But Montague defined pragmatics as the study of deictic or indexical words; yet Anglo- American linguistics and philosophy have a different sense, which we are concerned with. Our next point is about the Anglo-American linguistics definition of pragmatics.

* ¹ Levinson (1983:1)

* ² Ibid