Analysis of Linguistic Manifestation of Modal Verbs in Pakistani English Newspaper Editorials–A Corpus Based Study

The aim of this research paper is to investigate linguistic manifestation of modal verbs in the editorials of Pakistani English newspapers i.e. The Dawn, The Nation and The News. The paper first focuses on which modal verbs are more frequently used by editorial writers and which modal verbs are less frequently used by editorial writers. Secondly, it also focuses on the linguistic manifestation of frequently used modal verbs. Thirdly, it deals with how modal auxiliaries are used by editorial writers to shape and reshape readers' opinions towards specific issues. To fulfill above research objectives a corpus of 25 editorials of month of march 2019 from Pakistan's wide read newspapers i.e. The Dawn, The Nation and The News has been collected. For analysis AntConc 3.4.4 version is used and for the interpretation of modality (Halliday, 2004) functional approach has been employed. Finding of the research reveals that editorial writers have used the most the low value modal auxiliaries and auxiliaries of possibilities, permission and ability (i.e. can, could, may, might) in order to create politeness within the text. On the other hand, modal verbs of prediction or and modal verb of necessity are less frequently used. The Nation is more occupied not only in the use of modal verbs but also in the use of less frequently used modal verbs as compared to The Dawn and The Nation.