The Pragmatics of Modals in Shakespeare

Modals and related phenomena are without doubt one of the most complicated issues in the grammar of language. This study provides a reappraisal of the modals in Shakespeare's language from the pragmatic viewpoint, both micropragmatic and macropragmatic. The material selected for analysis are modals SHALL, SHOULD, WILL, WOULD, and their contracted forms. Micropragmatic aspects such as speech acts seem relatively easily accessible to historical researchers; however, this study moves further into the macropragmatic dimensions of language use than the earlier ones and covers politeness, dialogue, and discourse analysis.

Autorentext

The Author: Minako Nakayasu is Associate Professor of English at Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Shizuoka (Japan). She holds a Ph.D. degree (2005) in English linguistics from the School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (Poland). Her research field and publications are mainly concerned with semantics, pragmatics, English-Japanese contrastive linguistics, and the history of English, with specific reference to tense, aspect, and modality.

Inhalt
Contents: Theoretical and methodological preliminaries Earlier research on modals in Early Modern English Shakespeare's English SHALL/SHOULD WILL/WOULD Toward a macropragmatic analysis of modals Contracted forms.