Headline-judgments in English-speaking mass-media texts: epistemic modality, deontic modality, evidentiality

The article analyzes the pragmatic role of be likely to and ( be ) expected to markers in the journalist’s point of view and the actual information source expressing in the headline-judgments. For material of investigation we choose 250 publications in The Guardian Newspaper (2012-2017). On the base of contextual analyses of the headline-judgments it is argued that these markers reveal systematically their modal and evidential features, allowing the author to express relevantly his / her point of view and if necessary to distance from the opinion presented in the publication. It is shown that every marker possessing specific lexical and grammatical features contextually predetermines in a different way the limitations of the information which is actualized in the headline-judgments. This fact in its turn makes the base for their interchangeability and at the same time for their differentiating usage. On the level of the headline-judgments the basic pragmatic difference between the markers analyzed in the article is traced consistently in how they arrange the relations between predication and the author’s evaluation of the semantic content. For example, in contrast to be likely to, ( be ) expected to allows the author to predict the event and not to take the responsibility for the reliability of the information covered in the publication. Epistemic and deontic meaning actualizing presupposes in essence the point of view expressing, corresponding marking of the category of evidentiality. Based on the be likely to and ( be ) expected to markers the author arrange frequently his / her point of view as an opinion expressed by other subjects, more competent in the problems discussed. The evidential potential of ( be ) expected to is predetermined mostly by the passive syntactic structure: the point of view is arranged as reflecting the information from other subjects anticipating that the event is to take placy in the near future. Be likely to introduces the perceptive and / or indirect evidential dimension in the headline-judgments justifying the point of view the author expresses in the publication. Arranging the headline-judgments be likely to and ( be ) expected to depending to the specific context turn out to be the means of the epistemic and deontic modality and evidentiality realization. One of the meanings could be reduced or, on the contrary, be foregrounded, dominate in the headline-judgments. As our analyses of the factual material shows, these markers always realize epistemic modal meaning predetermined by their lexical and grammatical peculiarities. Localizing the relations between the first argument and the predicate these markers:  indicate indirectly that the author is the actual information source, expresses his / her point of view as the result of his / her observing the external circumstances which lead to some event realizing;  could be accompanied with explicit indication on the actual information source when the author doesn’t wish to take responsibility for covering the facts or events. Within the frameworks of the headline-judgments be likely to incorporating into the deep structure of the predicative relations specifies these relations indicating that the first argument has all necessary features to combine with the predicate. In this case the headline-judgment is interpreted in terms of probability and the potency of the predicative relations is considered to be problematic as the fact covered could not be realized in the near future. ( Be ) expected to actualizes the epistemic dimension, orients the readers’ attention to the effectiveness of the predicative relations fixed in the headline-judgment. The epistemic judgment does not reveal directly the information source, is arranged as expectation which is an apparent consequence of some social or political situation. The evidential marking of the headline-judgments is interpreted in our article as the important mechanism of supporting the journalistic ideals connected with the objective fact and event covering.