Possibility modals in English tourism discourse: Variation across three web registers

Abstract

The present study explores central modals CAN, COULD, MAY, MIGHT, and the semi-auxiliary verb BE ABLE TO in tourism discourse with a focus on register variation. A small-scale analysis conducted on the tailor-made corpus (c. 131,000 words) of three text types/registers (promotional texts, e-newsletters, and managerial responses to guests’ reviews) revealed an important variation across registers in the distribution of possibility modals, the degree to which their polysemantic nature is displayed and in their capacity to serve specific metadiscoursal functions. The findings clearly indicate that the causes of the observed variation lie in the influence stemming from the differing situational characteristics, especially communicative purposes, interactiveness, topic domains, and personal involvement.