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Е.А. Данилкина
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Гуманитарный вестник
# 6·2017
The pragmatic role of modal possibility utterances
in the context of academic writing
© E.A. Danilkina
Saint Petersburg University, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia
This paper investigates the nature of modal possibility constructions and discursive fac-
tors that influence their use in contexts of academic writing. For the first time, the study
involves data derived from comparative frequency analysis of Russian and German lin-
guistic papers. From the pragmatic point of view, possibility constructions can be inter-
preted in two ways — they serve to transmit objective knowledge on the one hand, and
are used as convincing, precaution and hedging strategies, on the other hand. With a
specific focus on their intention and communicative value, possibility statements are
brought into correspondence with epistemic and ontological modality.
Keywords:
scientific discourse, scientific linguistic article, modality of the scientific text,
modality of possibility, epistemic possibility, ontological possibility, scientific argumenta-
tion
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