The Role of Modal Auxiliaries in Commencement Speeches: A Case Study of Ghana and America

Elvis  ResCue; Obed  Broohm; Berengar Irene  Duku

Elvis ResCue University of Essex
Obed Broohm Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-1962
Berengar Irene Duku Dompoase Senior High School

Keywords: Commencement speeches, modal auxiliaries, speech acts, Ghana, America

Abstract

The uses of modal auxiliaries in research papers and political speeches have been well established. The commencement speech, however, remains a green area as far as exploring modal auxiliary usage is concerned. This study explores a comparative semantic contribution of modal auxiliaries in commencement speeches in Ghana and America, and their link to the Speech Act Theory. A total corpus size of 51,447 words was obtained. The study employed AntConc 4.0 to generate the instances of modal auxiliary usage in the data. Leech’s (2004) theory of modal auxiliary meaning, and Searle’s (1969) Speech Act Theory were employed to identify modal meanings and speech acts performed in the speeches. The results indicate that the American commencement speeches employed more modal auxiliaries than the Ghanaian commencement speeches. The study highlights the vital role of modal auxiliaries and speech acts in encoding actions that speech acts inspire within the Ghanaian and American contexts.

Author Biographies

Obed Broohm, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana

Obed Broohm holds a PhD from the University of Verona, Italy, in 2018. His research focuses on the morpho-syntax of African languages with special interest in nominalization and compounding and properties in Esahie.

Berengar Irene Duku, Dompoase Senior High School

Berengar Irene Duku holds an MPhil from KNUST. Her research focuses on discourse analysis.