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Both collexeme analysis and correspondence analysis were implemented to investigate the relationship between congruent patterns of modality and metaphorical patterns of modality in different genres of American English and British English in this paper. The findings are summarised as follows: 1) modal adverbs and/or adjectives that are significantly attracted to congruent patterns of modality are also significantly attracted to metaphorical patterns of modality in both varieties of English; 2) the significant attraction in both congruent and metaphorical patterns of modality is genre-sensitive, i.e., it preferably happens in academic genre for the purpose of making propositions at issue non-negotiable and projecting authoritative stances to non-communicative readers; 3) the same significant attraction in both patterns of modality occurs more preferably in British academic genre than in American academic genre. This research is of significance in that it highlights not only metaphorical patterns of modality but also congruent patterns of modality; additionally, it also bridges theories in Systemic Functional Linguistics and advanced approaches such as collexeme analysis and correspondence analysis in Corpus Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grammatical pattern of explicit objective modal expressions and its three subtypes (i.e., explicit objective expressions of probability, usuality and obligation) are investigated in this paper. By implementing a collostructional analysis, specifically collexeme analysis and multiple distinctive collexeme analysis, we aim at uncovering how, with respect to different genres in COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English), modal expressions are significantly attracted or repelled by the grammatical pattern, and how these expressions are diachronically associated with the grammatical pattern in different time periods of COCA and COHA (Corpus of Historical American English). The genre-related findings demonstrate that explicit objective modal expressions of probability and obligation are attracted by formal genres while repelled by informal ones, whereas those of usuality are repelled by both formal academic and informal spoken genres. The diachronic findings demonstrate that modal expressions that denote low values of probability and obligation have undergone a path of gradual change from repulsion to attraction because of an accumulation of negotiability and politeness by language users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]