Phraseology and Culture in English

Part of the function of the cluster could possibly may thus be the facilitation 

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Definitely maybe: Modality clusters and politeness in spoken discourse 
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of hyperbolic expressions, and thus the many discourse functions that these 
occupy. 
In terms of contextual categories, could possibly occurs 7 times in the 
intimate category (0.0007%), 10 times in the socio-cultural (0.0006%), 5 
times in the professional (0.001%), 9 times in the transactional (0.0007%) 
and 4 times in the pedagogic (0.0008%). The distribution of could possibly 
is not as varied as that of might just but it is striking that it is most com-
monly used in professional discourse. While could possibly tends to be used 
to voice an often negative opinion, this appears counter-intuitive in a genre 
where the distance between the speakers can be more substantial than in 
interactions between friends. The main difference, however, between might
just and could possibly in this respect seems to lie in the nature of the opin-
ion that is being expressed. In the case of might just this tends to be self-
referential while it is directed outwards in the case of could possibly, which 
may be more acceptable in a professional context. This is reinforced by the 
different pronouns that precede the respective modal clusters. 
6. Modality clusters in the ELT context 
There is a well established body of research which is concerned with the 
teaching and learning of pragmatic language features, including markers of 
modality (see Kasper and Rose 1999 for an overview). There seems to be a 
general tendency for learners of English to employ fewer modal markers than 
native speakers (Steinmüller 1981; Weydt 1981) and to judge the value of 
modal particles as not very high (Möllering and Nunan 1995). Furthermore, 
the fact that modality markers tend to realise a variety of different functions, 
depending on the discourse co-text and context, makes them difficult to 
teach and learn. Yet, these markers carry a substantial amount of informa-
tion about how speakers position themselves towards the hearer and towards 
the utterance, as well as about the overall context in which a conversation 
takes place. It is the interpersonal content of such markers which makes 
them an important area to cover in the English language teaching context. 
Research on the acquisition of multi-word units has shown that certain 
clusters are heavily relied on for efficient communication and as a means to 
speed up integration with the host community (Wong Fillmore 1976). 
Schmitt and Carter discuss the use of certain situational multi-word units, 
such as “cold, isn’t it”, and argue that they “have the purpose of acting both 
as a social lubrication and of actively co-constructing interpersonal com-

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Svenja Adolphs
munication.” (2004: 10). Such units tend to be acquired as a whole by L1 
learners before the compositional organisation is fully grasped and there is 
a general consensus that learners in an L2 context may also benefit from 
strategic exposure to language “chunks” (Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992). 
Considering the analysis of might just and could possibly above, it could 
be argued that the same principle should apply to the teaching and learning 
of modality clusters. A corpus-based approach would allow a suitable dif-
ferentiation of meanings in context, as illustrated by Möllering (2001). It may 
be beneficial to expose students to modality clusters in their own right, 
rather than to teach these alongside their individual composites. However, 
further pedagogic research is necessary to determine effectiveness and use 
of different approaches in the classroom context.