Igina Z. Modal Words in Characters’ Speech: Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects (A Study of English and American Modernist Prose).

This thesis focuses on the study of semantic and pragmatic features of English modal words with regard to their influence on characters' speech. The paper analyses the influence of modal words on the utterance as a whole, as well as their impact on further development of the communicative situation. It has been revealed that modal words expressing alethic and epistemic modality play a prominent role in characters' speech in English and American modernist fiction. Being connected with the speaker's intentionality, these words presuppose weighing the alternatives (creation of possible worlds), thus leading to dissipation of fictional reality within one event, which is characteristic of modernist writing. According to the synergetic approach in the study of modal words, multiple interpretations (bifurcations) of the situation development by the speaker, acting as a personage, predetermined by the use of modal words have been analysed, alongside with possible perlocutionary effect of an utterance containing a modal word (attractor). By using a modal word the character foresees different variants of the situation development, that is why modal words are highlighted as sense-generating elements of the utterance, identified as parameters of order, which organize characters' speech