Introduction The present course paper deals with the study of the

Chapter I: The Category of modality
I.1 Category of modality in stylistics
Modality, or the attitude of the speaker or writer to reality characterizes any utterance .It is a category inherent in the language in action and therefore, equally with other categories, constitutes the essence of the communicative process. The objective –modal meaning expresses the character of the relation of the reported information to reality, whereas the subjective modal meaning expresses the attitude of the speaker to the reported information. This meaning is expressed not through the structural scheme
And its forms ( although in some cases the objectivization of subjective modal meaning is discernible in the very structural scheme of the sentence), but by additional grammatic , lexicogrammatic and intonation means , imposed on one or another form of the sentence”. And ,finally the third approach to modality is found in modern English grammars, which avoid giving any definition to this category, evidently looking upon it as a matter of course, and confine themselves only to stating the forms which carry modality.
However , modality is not only an aggregate sum of modal elements, scattered over separate sentences in the text .It is inherent in a poetic text as a whole .,,From the
three main genres of literature-lyrics, epos, drama- writes G.V.Stepanov,- for many centuries of its existence lyrical poetry has become the best from of expressing the author’s inner state and further on² :’A personal attitude to the created image is sure to suppose an evaluation.
Things are entirely different in scientific texts. Objectivity, logic, argumentation – the typical qualities of scientific texts. Objectivity, logic argumentation – the typical qualities of scientific texts-usually leave no room for subjective evaluating modality. Similar absence of subjective modality is typical of business documents too, while in newspaper editorials, sketches, essays and speeches modality comes forward rather distinctly. In compositions of emotive prose textual modality is realized in the basis of certain regularities .Subjective evaluating attitude to the object of utterance ,as a rule ,doesn’t reveal the essence of a phenomenon ,but only colours it correspondingly ,and gives a notion of the author’s world outlook .Therefore textual modality more frequently find its place in relative spans of the text , which don’t carry the main factual information , but not in predicative spans, which are mostly imbued with facts .Yet, in the process of linear development of the text accentuation can be shifted and relative spans may gradually acquire the status of predicative ones. As a result modality acquires a more significant role in creating conceptual information.