Abstract

Modality is an important grammatical expression which finds its expression in the editorial section of newspapers in Pakistan. Firstly, this paper deals with the analysis of “Modals” in English and highlights their nature and function. Secondly, it reports on which modal verbs are commonly used by the editors. Thirdly, it is focused on how the modal verbs in Pakistani English newspapers are used to manipulate readers’ opinion towards specific issues. For this purpose, a corpus of two Pakistani English newspapers: The Dawn and The News, equally divided by editors, was analyzed wielding concordance tool. The comparative analysis of these newspapers revealed that both the editors chose mainly predictive auxiliary modals such as will and would to the other types of modal. The predictive modal for The News suggested that prediction about the future “what will/would happen” was the major apprehension of the editorial writers. On the other hand, comparing the modals of obligation in the two newspapers, The Daily Dawn was more focused on solution—what should be done.

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