The Might of 'Might': A Mitigating Strategy in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Female Scientific Discourse

Abstract

Apart from the practical function of efficiently exchanging knowledge, scientific writing is also used to convey persuasion by using a number of pragmatic strategies that help authors gain acceptance for their claims. Such strategies include the acknowledgment of other authors and their opinions, politeness directed towards the reader, and hedging, this is, the mitigation of certain claims that may otherwise sound too categorical by means of various linguistic devices, among them, modal verbs. This paper analyses the use of the modal verb ‘might’ as a mitigating device in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English scientific writing. The text samples used for this study are taken from the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Variables such as scientific discipline, genre, sex and origin of the author, as well as date of publication have been considered in the analysis.