Exploring the semantic and pragmatic functions of modal auxiliaries: A case study of commencement speeches

The use of modal auxiliaries in research articles and political speeches has been well investigated. The genre of commencement speeches, however, has yet to be investigated as far as the use of modal auxiliaries are concerned. In addressing the gap, the present study compares the usage of modal auxiliary verbs in commencement speeches of Ghanaian speakers with American speakers, and investigates the semantic contribution of the modal auxiliaries in the speeches. Additionally, the study also explores the speech act performed via the usage of the modal auxiliary verb and their pragmatic nuances in commencement speeches. The dataset for the study is a corpus of 51,447 words obtained from twelve (12) commencement speeches of the Ashesi University (in Ghana) and twelve (12) highly ranked American Universities. The study employed AntConc 4.0 to generate the instances of modal auxiliary usage in the data. Leech’s (2004) theory of modal auxiliary meaning and Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory were employed to identify modal meanings and speech acts performed in the speeches. The study highlights the vital role of modal auxiliaries and speech acts in encoding actions that speech acts inspire within the Ghanaian and American contexts. These include the can-do attitude of Ghanaians, on the one hand, and the need-to-cherish-family and keep close ties attitude of the Americans, on the other hand. The results show that relatively speaking, American commencement speeches employ more modal auxiliaries than Ghanaian commencement speeches.