Epistemic modality in professional communication
Epistemic modality in professional communication

Summary/Abstract: The study is concerned with the use of epistemic modality in professional communication. M.A.K. Halliday’s seminal theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics laid the theoretical foundation of the present study, which focuses on the language use in the social context. It analyses various aspects of modality and explores the use of language functions in professional communication. The empirical part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of selected instances of the use of modality in banking discourse from the perspective of the qualitative study. The conclusion has been drawn that epistemic modality in professional communication in banking discourse is used to characterise the interactants’ opinion expressed within a range of a positive and negative polarity. Consequently, it can be confirmed that the discourse of banking represents a well-established written communication model. It includes the following components: a) factual information (message), b) the discourse-relevant communication means (the language used for instrumental purposes), c) situational context, d) communicative effect created to achieve the communicative goal.

• Details
• Contents