Modal Verbs for the Advice Move in Advice Columns

The present study investigates how advice writers employ move sequences and modal verbs to achieve intended discourse functions. This paper aims to testify two research hypotheses: 1. Advice writers of different topics employ different moves and modal verbs to achieve discourse function, and 2. The differences may imply writers’ intentions, emotion and expectancy of effects on the readers to interpret. The corpus of five advice columns for investigation is collected from the website Creators.com. Locher’s (2006) ten moves for advice columns and Leech (2005)’s proposal of discourse function of modals are the frameworks for data analysis. The results indicate four frequent moves: advice, assessment, explanation, and general information. In addition, the columnists use different modal verbs in dealing with different issues. This study has shed light on language learning about the discourse function realized by moves and modals.