Lexical co-occurrence of the modal verb “must” in business media discourse: A corpus-based study

This study examines the lexical co-occurrence patterns of the modal verb must in British business media discourse. Using the British National Corpus (Newspapers subcorpus) accessed through The Prime Machine tool, six hundred concordance lines were extracted and analysed within a four-word right-hand span. The focus on the right collocational environment isolates the collocational field in which must projects its modal meaning. Verbs were examined both in their base and participial forms to account for variation between active and passive constructions. Methodologically, a collocational approach enables the analysis of must without reliance on interpretive coding, which ensures transparency, since every association can be traced to measurable frequencies rather than subjective judgment. The analysis reveals a limited but stable set of collocates dominated by be and have, followed by verbs denoting organisational or policy-related actions, such as take, make, and act. The findings show that must in business reporting functions primarily as a marker of inferred necessity rather than directive obligation. The study contributes a replicable, data-driven description of modal verb in business discourse and showcases how collocational evidence can capture shifts in the linguistic encoding of obligation. Importantly, it suggests that looking closely at the behaviour of a single auxiliary can provide meaningful information regarding how a discourse community organizes necessity.