Recent changes in the spread of verbal modal expressions in the Hong Kong and Singapore printed press, in contrast with the British and American ones: Exploring the potential of Factiva® for the diachronic investigation of World Englishes

Abstract

Against the backdrop of developing views on the relative importance of language-as-a-whole vs. genre-specific data for the investigation of grammatical change, specifically in New Englishes, this paper examines very recent evolution in the frequency of use of the modal auxiliaries and a set of “quasi-modal” expressions in the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post and the Singaporean daily The Straits Times. Previous research based on the Brown corpora family has established that the frequency of the modals is decreasing in both British and American English when considered in their entirety, but increasing within the pages of the American news publication TIME Magazine. Research on (recent change in) the use of modals and quasi-modals in newer Englishes employing various components of the International Corpus of English, on the other hand, has so far almost exclusively only considered frequency differences between the spoken and the written language, and has used these as a basis for speculations about diachronic evolution in various national varieties considered in their entirety, in the absence of balanced and representative historical or Brown family-like corpora for (most) non-metropolitan varieties of English. The compilation of such corpora is only starting to get underway. If genre is a relevant factor, however, and if empirical historical evidence could be sourced from databases other than those specifically compiled for linguistic research, we could already start our historical investigation of the grammar of New Englishes with those genres these alternative sources make accessible. This paper will explore the extent to which the commercial information tool Factiva® can be useful in this way.