The pedagogic grammarian's dilemma: Modality and personality in grammatical description
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2009
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This paper investigates an issue that I call the “pedagogic grammarian’s dilemma”: the choice
facing writers of pedagogic grammars between being specific about grammar and risking being
wrong, or hedging and risking being vague, as formulated by Henry Widdowson (1997). Using
two corpora of grammatical description, it examines how a number of exponents of modality are
used to hedge and finds firstly that they are far more common than in ordinary text. More importantly
there is a link between the use of such modality and the approach to personality chosen in
the grammars: hedging is more common when the more friendly YOU is used to address users
than when WE is used; this suggests an interpersonal (as well as epistemic) motivation for the
hedging. Overall the response of the grammars studied to the pedagogic grammarian’s dilemma is
to hedge, in order, it seems, to avoid being prescriptive.
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Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 45.1 (2009), pp. 117-135