Keywords
corpus linguistics
recipes
19th century
modal verbs
escritura de mujeres
lingüística de corpus
recetas
siglo XIX
verbos modales
How to Cite
Abstract
This study focuses on analyzing deontic modal verbs present in two recipe books written by women in 19th-century England: "A Lady" (1818) and Beeton (1875). A contrastive analysis is conducted to examine how these authors use these verbs, common in instructional texts like recipes due to their prescriptive nature. Objectives include identifying deontic modal verbs, detecting similarities or differences in their usage, and observing potential variations between the two texts. Despite significant changes in the era, traditional roles of women as caregivers and healers persist. The presentation contextualizes the 19th century and women's roles, introducing key concepts such as gender, text type, and register. Likewise, the nature of modal verbs is explored, defining the term modality, as well as its main types. Subsequently, the study employs corpus linguistics methodology using the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English (COWITE). In this analysis, quantitative and qualitative approaches are combined to examine ocurrences. The results reveal both similarities and differences in the use of these modal verbs, which seem to be attributed to distinct linguistic styles between the authors.
References
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