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al verbs: can, could, may, might, must, shall,  should,  will  and  would.  This  classification  of  modal  verbs  will  be  adopted  in this thesis, which aims to provide a descriptive analysis of how the nine central modal verbs, as the engagement resources, i.e. resources which in various ways construe for the  text  a  heteroglossic  backdrop  of  prior  utterances,  alternative  viewpoints  and anticipated  responses,  are  used  in  English  editorials  in  China  Daily  and  The Washington  Post.  China Daily  is  the  most  authoritative English  newspaper  in  China. It  targets  an  international  audience  including  foreign  diplomats  and  tourists  as  it translates  major  Chinese  newspaper  articles  in  its  editorials.  The  Washington  Post  is generally regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers, along with The New  York  Times  and  The  Wall  Street  Journal.  It  has  distinguished  itself  through  its political reporting. Editorial discourse is ‘the voice of the newspaper’ (Morley, 2004: 79) and it may ‘argue, attack, criticize  and  try  to  persuade  the  readers  to  accept  its principles’  (Mott,  1967:  254).  That’s  why  editorials  from  the  two  newspapers  are selected  as  the  research  subject.  To  be  specific,  this  thesis  mainly  aims  at  answering the following questions: (1) What  is  the  respective  frequency  of  the  nine  modal  verbs  in  editorials  in  China Daily and The Washington Post? (2) How  are  the  nine  modal  verbs,  adopted  as  engagement  resources,  distributed differently in editorials from the two newspapers?   (3) To what extent do the modal verbs open up space for alternative voices in the two newspapers? What are the possible reasons for the difference? 
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Chapter   Two   Literature Review 

When  it  comes  to  modality  or  modal  verbs,  there  have  been  extensive  and comprehensive researches on their classification, linguistic features and other aspects. An  overall  review  of  the  previous  researches  on  modality  and  modal  verbs  is necessary  for  the  present  thesis.  This  chapter  is  composed  of  four  sections:  the definitions  of  modality  and  modal  verbs,  studies  on  modal  verbs,  studies  on  English editorials and a summary of previous studies.  

2.1 Definitions of Modality and Modal verbs 
As a valid cross-language grammatical category (Palmer, 2001: 1), modality has attracted much attention in linguistics, spanning from本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。