8.93, Sum: _will_ and _shall_ in journal writing

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-93. Thu Jan 23 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.93, Sum: _will_ and _shall_ in journal writing

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1)
Date:  Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:53:52 +0000
From:  "M.Shuib" <M.Shuib at sheffield.ac.uk>
Subject:  sum: will and shall in journal writing

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:53:52 +0000
From:  "M.Shuib" <M.Shuib at sheffield.ac.uk>
Subject:  sum: will and shall in journal writing

A few weeks ago I posted the following question:

 **I am doing a study on the use of modals by journal writers. Among
other things, I found that many of the writers  in my data employ
 the modals will and shall in volitional sense interchangeably .
i.e. One of the writers, for example, at the beginning of his article
 uses volitional will  as in :

THE ORGANISATION OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS.
FIRST, WE WILL PROVIDE A GENERAL BACKGROUND TO
 COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES ....

and then, at a later stage of his article, he changes to  volitional shall,
as in:

I SHALL SUGGEST IN THE DISCUSSION OF THE MODEL THAT ...


What I would like to know is whether you yourself adopt this approach
in your journal or dissertation writing If you do, could you please
offer some explanation. **


Some of the people who responded said that the use of will/shall in
journal writing is a matter of style and consistency. M. Fryd, for
example , puts down such fluctuations to 'straightforward bad
writing'.  others gave the following comment:

1. Sherri Condon  (condo at usl.edu)
Most Americans do not distinguish shall and will

2. Rick Mc Callister (rmccalli at sunmuv1.MUW.Edu)
In American English the use of shall sounds archaic or pedantic

3. J. DeChicchis ( jed at ue.ipc.hiroshima-uac.jp)

It is difficult for the reader to perceive a semantic difference for
shall/will. This difficulty is not a reflection of the language
proficiency differences of foreign and native readers. This kind of
inderminacy has been reported for modal usages in cross-dialectal
contact situation.

Some of the people who responded argue that the two examples i gave
above have no volitional overtone at all. They state that the modals
above are simply used to indicate futurity.

While I agree that there is some element of futurity in the examples,
there is also, in my view,  a sense of volition involved. Both of the
modals above can be paraphrased as '....intend to ...' which I take
as the chief feature of volitional meaning. For those who think that
the idea of volition for will and shall is a wishful thinking on the
part of older grammarians, I would recommmend you to refer to
1. Coates, J (1983) The semantics of modals and modality
2. Butler, C. (1990) Modals in scientific writing, in Nash (ed) The
writing scholar

Thank you for everybody who responded to my query








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