Modal Auxiliary Verbs in The Jakarta Post Op-Ed Articles by Indonesian and Non-Indonesian Writers

Aulia Nur Rahmawati; Tofan Dwi Hardjanto

doi:10.22146/lexicon.v12i1.98573

Modal Auxiliary Verbs in The Jakarta Post Op-Ed Articles by Indonesian and Non-Indonesian Writers

https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v12i1.98573

Aulia Nur Rahmawati^(1*), Tofan Dwi Hardjanto⁽²⁾

(1) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(2) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract

This study was aimed at finding the meaning, similarities, and differences of the use of modal auxiliary verbs in editorial text from the Indonesian newspaper, The Jakarta Post, regarding the writers’ various linguistic backgrounds. The data were collected from 20 editorial articles from outside contributors of the newspaper using corpus linguistics software #Lancsbox v. 6.0 showing 286 instances of eight modal auxiliary verbs. The most employed modal auxiliary verbs by both Indonesian and non-Indonesian writers are can, will, should, may, would, could, must, and might respectively. To find the meaning of the modal auxiliary verbs, Biber et al.’s (1999) classification of deontic and epistemic meanings was used. The result of this study shows that the writers used more modal auxiliary verbs with epistemic meaning rather than deontic meaning, indicating their commitment to the truth of their argument. The writers’ different linguistic background also suggests significant association in expressing their opinions and arguments in terms of their modal auxiliary verbs use.

Keywords

modal auxiliary verbs; deontic; epistemic; corpus linguistics; semantics

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v12i1.98573