Summary Details
| Query: |
sum: will and shall in journal writing
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| Author: | M Shuib | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
Text/Corpus Linguistics |
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| Summary: |
A few weeks ago I posted the following question: **I am doing a study on the use of modals by journal writers. Among other things, I found that many of the writers in my data employ the modals will and shall in volitional sense interchangeably . i.e. One of the writers, for example, at the beginning of his article uses volitional will as in : THE ORGANISATION OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS. FIRST, WE WILL PROVIDE A GENERAL BACKGROUND TO COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES .... and then, at a later stage of his article, he changes to volitional shall, as in: I SHALL SUGGEST IN THE DISCUSSION OF THE MODEL THAT ... What I would like to know is whether you yourself adopt this approach in your journal or dissertation writing If you do, could you please offer some explanation. ** Some of the people who responded said that the use of will/shall in journal writing is a matter of style and consistency. M. Fryd, for example , puts down such fluctuations to 'straightforward bad writing'. others gave the following comment: 1. Sherri Condon (condo@usl.edu) Most Americans do not distinguish shall and will 2. Rick Mc Callister (rmccalli@sunmuv1.MUW.Edu) In American English the use of shall sounds archaic or pedantic 3. J. DeChicchis ( jed@ue.ipc.hiroshima-uac.jp) It is difficult for the reader to perceive a semantic difference for shall/will. This difficulty is not a reflection of the language proficiency differences of foreign and native readers. This kind of inderminacy has been reported for modal usages in cross-dialectal contact situation. Some of the people who responded argue that the two examples i gave above have no volitional overtone at all. They state that the modals above are simply used to indicate futurity. While I agree that there is some element of futurity in the examples, there is also, in my view, a sense of volition involved. Both of the modals above can be paraphrased as '....intend to ...' which I take as the chief feature of volitional meaning. For those who think that the idea of volition for will and shall is a wishful thinking on the part of older grammarians, I would recommmend you to refer to 1. Coates, J (1983) The semantics of modals and modality 2. Butler, C. (1990) Modals in scientific writing, in Nash (ed) The writing scholar Thank you for everybody who responded to my query |
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| LL Issue: | 8.93 | |
| Date Posted: | 23-Jan-1997 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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