The use of epistemic and deontic modality in Spanish students of English in tertiary education

Abstract

This paper sets out to discuss the subject matter of epistemic and deontic pragmatic failure in Spanish tertiary students. For this, 30 Spanish tertiary students are selected in order to determine to what extent language transfer causes limitations when interpreting the illocutionary force of modals. In particular, we want to shed light on the following questions: (1) With what frequency do deontic modals cause pragmatic failure in students responses in contrast to epistemic modals? (2) Does “language transfer” cause a major limitation when interpreting the illocutionary forces of deontic and epistemic modals? Could language transfer break down communication? (3) Can deontic and epistemic pragmatic failure be interpreted as impolite? In order to do so, the questionnaires obtained have been analysed following Thomas (1983), Riley (1989), Brown and Levinson (1987) and Downing (2015).