The role of deontic modality in the construction and mitigation of evaluation in hard news reporting

1 Introduction

In this paper, we consider the role of deontic modality (also known as event modality or modulation,^[1] though there are different nuances to these terms) as it is strategically employed within and across texts. This entails considering the options within the system of deontic modality itself, as a lexicogrammatical system; the interaction between deontic modal elements and other elements of the clause in creating a higher-order pattern of meanings (corresponding to the semantic stratum in Halliday and Hasan’s model of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and, less directly, to Martin’s discourse semantics); and the function of these textual meanings in relation to the social context of their production. While deontic modality has generally been viewed as essentially concerned with the logic of obligation and permission, in this paper we consider deontic modality as a semantic and value-laden means that a speaker or writer has of evaluating an existing state-of-affairs against an ideal state-of-affairs. In that way, certain entities are discursively foregrounded in texts as the primary attitudinal targets whose actions are evaluated as either compliant or contradictory to an ideal state-of-affairs. This work arose from Rantsudu’s (2018) doctoral research into the strategies used to mitigate evaluative meanings (based on Martin’s Appraisal framework) in hard news stories that are obliged to remain objective, and the different discursive effects of the various mitigating strategies employed by two different news agencies.

The requirement for objective reporting is one of the focal points that are outlined in the Media Code of Ethics as set out by the Press Council of Botswana. The Council was established by Parliament to “preserve the maintenance of high professional standards within the media” (Parliament of Botswana 2008). According to the Media Code of Ethics, objectivity encompasses principles of accuracy, impartiality, and neutrality, and over the years, the government has constantly called on news agencies to demonstrate professional standards by following these principles. The government’s position on media objectivity has, however, been met with some strong contention. In his scrutiny of Botswana’s media regulation policies, Tutwane (2011: 47) presents a historical overview of the policies and argues that such policies have been used by government as a self-serving mechanism to stifle dissent, censor journalists, and get journalists to “follow the government line”. Echoing similar sentiments, and with reference to the 2011 public sector workers’ strike in Botswana, Rooney (2012: 12) states that regulation policies on the running of press reporting give the government inequitable influence and control over state-owned media. Rooney further argues that during the public sector workers’ strike, the state-owned media did not report the news objectively but presented a distorted and subjective coverage that in turn gave the public a negative view of the strike.

When considered alongside the government’s requirement for objective news reporting, the arguments that are advanced by Tutwane (2011) and Rooney (2012) seem to point to some underlying differences of opinion about what objectivity entails. Of particular concern is the apparent elusive nature of objectivity, and in light of this, we will in the next section consider various definitions of objectivity as presented in the literature.

2 Objectivity

Objectivity has been shown to be a key value of news reporting across different journalistic cultures (Richardson 2007; White and Thomson 2008) and its definition is a matter of ongoing debate. With a view to approaching objectivity from the angle of the news media, White (2000: 383) sees objectivity in terms of three constituent principles: neutrality, balance, and reliability. White (2000) indicates that the key characteristic of these principles is the quotation of external news sources. To differentiate between neutrality, balance, and reliability, White sees neutrality as the overarching principle by which news reporters quote third-party voices within news texts, particularly in hard news stories, thus, refraining from expressing opinions, judgements, or emotional responses of their own. White (2000: 383) also indicates that while the quotation of third-party voices may be used by the news media as validation for objective reporting, the media has a complex role when reporters have to navigate through contentious judgements or emotionally charged news content that is expressed by external news sources. White argues that in such cases, the news media must rely on the principle of balance. This principle of objectivity involves the presentation of more than one point of view. That means, on a given matter that is being reported, news reporters have the responsibility to present more than one point of view and by so doing, they provide news sources with the opportunity to ‘reply to’ or contend the views that are presented by other news sources. In terms of reliability, the requirement is that third-party voices that are quoted should have appropriate authority or social standing.

Interestingly, the argument for the use of quotations as a characteristic mark of objectivity in news reporting has been shown to be problematic. White (2006, 2009, 2012 and Jullian (2011) point out that the practice of using third party voices involves processes of subjective selection, interpretation, and exploitation of external voices for evaluative purposes. Drawing from White’s (2000) discussion of neutrality, Thomson et al. (2008), Pounds (2010), and Sabao and Visser (2015) opine that objectivity is better defined in terms of strategic choices that journalistic authors make in order to constrain and conceal their authorial subjectivity in the news. Thomson et al. (2008), Pounds (2010), and Sabao and Visser (2015) argue that the appearance of evaluations or subjective opinions within ‘objective’ news reports, though such subjectivity may be strategically managed, renders objectivity a vague, obscure, and ideologically determined concept.

A further definition of objectivity is given by Stenvall (2008, 2014 who views objectivity as a concept that is related to factuality and opines that the two concepts are intertwined. Stenvall (2014: 462) considers factuality “to be a somewhat more specific concept than objectivity” and states that factuality relates to journalists’ “quest for reporting facts”. Stenvall’s definition highlights the complex and controversial nature of objectivity, and the likelihood of objectivity and factuality being used interchangeably, thus resulting in terminological uncertainty. Evidently, objectivity is a variously defined and contested term with overlapping or even contradictory facets, and in some cases facets that may be different cross-culturally. Each of the principles of objectivity can be said to be indicative of some complex relations that news reporters manage within texts. If we take the principle of balance for example, the requirement is for the presentation of ‘both sides of the story’. However, it has been shown in the literature that news reporters can embed their subjective comments and intrude into the text while quoting external news sources, and that the choice of certain ‘factual’ information can betray what appears as ‘objective’ news coverage (Rantsudu 2022; Reeves and Keeble 2015; Sabao and Visser 2015). As such, balance can be highly evaluative of both sides. Arguably, the requirement for objective reporting as outlined in the Media Code of Ethics of Botswana is brought into question. Rather than base her research on any one of the definitions around objectivity and neutrality, Rantsudu (2018) opted to analyse the different means by which evaluative or subjective language was mitigated and only then to relate the findings to the range of perspectives on objectivity and neutrality.

3 Mitigation strategies in hard news reporting

Our use of the term mitigation is intended to cover any means of reducing or overriding either the degree or the subjective load of evaluative language. In this regard it encompasses other terms, such as attribution, evocation, and hedging, inasmuch as these strategies are used to lessen or deflect the evaluative content of statements (which may not be their unique function in texts). We extend the use of this term to include the use of deontic modality, therefore, even if it is high in force, as it downplays or obscures the degree of direct subjectivity in the implied evaluation. The deontic force itself can also be downplayed, of course, through interaction with other features included in our network, such as attribution.

In the course of her doctoral research, Rantsudu (2018) built up a system network of mitigating strategies. The individual language features within this network were taken from the Appraisal Framework. Whereas Rantsudu’s work was centred on mitigation, however, Martin and White (2005: 1) describe their approach as being concerned with “the construction of shared feelings and values”, with the affiliative properties of texts, and the systems networks they develop are constructed accordingly. This difference in perspective meant that it was necessary to demonstrate the connections between features in new ways. This should not be seen as a challenge to the existing Appraisal networks. We know that words and structures are semantically interconnected in multiple ways, such that no two-dimensional network can capture all these relations. This goes back to Saussure (1916: 170–171):

Alternatively, outside of speech, words which have something in common are associated in the memory and therefore form groups at the heart of which highly diverse associations are in operation. Thus, the word teaching will bring a host of other words unconsciously to mind (teach, teacher, etc., or arming, changing, etc., or even education and apprenticeship); in one way or another, all of these have something in common between them. (Saussure 1916: 170–171, authors’ translation)

It is therefore possible to highlight the connections between items in different ways for specific purposes. Such two-dimensional representations can be seen as the motivated privileging of a specific angle of interpretation and the semantic interconnections relevant to that perspective. As pointed out by Matthiessen (2023: 201):

As always, descriptive decisions reflect considerations from different vantage points, and will be made to optimize these considerations. (Matthiessen 2023: 201)

Therefore, while privileging the perspective of mitigation produces different systems networks from those privileging affiliation, these networks are not to be seen as either modifications or alternatives. They are merely looking at the same complex web of relations from a different angle. For example, scription (inscription vs evocation) and attribution appear at quite distant points in the web as pictured in Martin and White, with scription being a subsystem of attitude (Martin and White 2005: 67) and attribution (in its various forms) being a subsystem of engagement (Martin and White 2005: 117). However, when we adopt a different perspective for specific analytical purposes, we see that these two features come into much closer contact, as with the system for journalistic key (Martin and White 2005: 173). Here we note that the system for journalistic key is clearly related to questions of objectivity and mitigation, so it should come as no surprise that the system of mitigation developed by Rantsudu (2018) similarly privileged the semantics that connect these two features (see Figure 1).

Figure 1:

System network of evaluation and mitigating strategies in Botswana newspapers (Rantsudu 2018).

4 Methodology

The methodological perspective we propose for the analysis of deontic modality as a resource for construction of evaluation on one hand, and a resource for mitigation of evaluation on the other entails three different aspects of description:

1. The lexicogrammatical system of deontic modality.

2. The interplay of deontic modality and other elements of the clause.

3. The value systems (implicitly) underlying the utterances in context.

This perspective corresponds closely with Halliday’s trinocular perspective of examining the functions of features from below, from roundabout and from above, and also with the concept of lexicogrammatical features realising semantic, social or contextual distinctions.

At the lexicogrammatical level (i), we will simply reproduce Halliday’s descriptions as these are already familiar and operationalised by many authors. To this we will add features we have inductively identified as cooccurring in relevant ways with deontic features (ii), as well as an open system for the system of values within which individual judgments/evaluations are analysed as operating (iii).

After a brief overview of the data set, we will present the systems network as it has been developed to date, talking through each of the systemic contrasts within the network and illustrating these with examples from the data set. It should be noted here that this is the system as developed to date on the basis of one specific corpus of texts. While we would expect most of the distinctions included to be robust, it is within the nature of such inductive description that new categories will arise and old ones will need to be revised.

Once we have explained the systems within the network in detail, we will discuss one complete text from the data set to consider the effect of interacting features on clausal semantics and the relationship with the underlying value systems of the text producers. And we will finish with a brief consideration of the utility of the system, and the overall approach, for text and discourse analysis more generally.

4.1 Data set

In carrying out an analysis of mitigating strategies in hard news stories, Rantsudu (2018) considered a total of sixteen hard news stories from two Botswana English language dailies, Daily News (a state-owned newspaper) and Mmegi (a privately-owned newspaper). The news stories were obtained from online editions of the two newspapers’ official websites, www.dailynews.gov.bw (Daily News) and www.mmegi.bw (Mmegi) between July 2013 and December 2014. As we mentioned earlier, the news stories covered the 2011 public sector strike in Botswana. This data set was chosen on account of the fact that news about the strike was often reported with antagonistic overtones, and the key players in the event were constantly expressing value judgements about the existing states-of-affairs, that is:

1. The collapse of negotiations between the government and workers’ unions, and the resultant eight-week strike, and

2. the apparent negligence of workers’ welfare by the government (expressed by opposition parties as they discursively questioned the reasons advanced by the government for the non-increment of workers’ salaries).

In this paper, therefore, our focus is on the creation of the systems network of deontic modality and we use the strike news data set to illustrate relevant features of the network. This is because the data set presented a rich resource for attitudinal meanings that are typically associated with hard news stories. The systems network developed on the basis of this data set is presented as Figure 2.

Figure 2:

The systems network for deontic modality in its textual and discursive environment.

The systems network above comprises five main dimensions of systems:

1. Domain type

2. Interactants

3. Modality

4. Attribution

5. Evaluation

We will discuss these in turn, with some examples below. Italics are added to the examples for emphasis.

5 Analysis

In the preceding section, we talked through the systemic contrasts within the network and discussed some illustrative examples from across different texts. We will now look at one complete text from the data set and discuss it in terms of deontic modality as a strategic means of mitigating evaluative language within texts. The following text recounts details about a press conference that was addressed by opposition party leaders concerning the workers’ strike.

1. Opposition supports workers

2. GABORONE: Government must show commitment when engaging civil servants over salary negotiations, Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president, Mr Dumelang Saleshando said at a press conference last Friday.

3. Grievances by public workers unions, he said, must be taken seriously and they must be respected by the government.

4. He affirmed that opposition parties support civil servants legal strike whose first phase will last for 10 days.

5. He said public workers’ salaries must be increased because they were being paid peanuts when compared to other countries of the same economic status as Botswana.

6. He noted that the cost of living in the country was high, while government had worsened the situation by increasing value added tax (VAT).

7. The BCP leader criticised government for allegedly not showing any commitment to avert the salary increment crisis.

8. He therefore urged government to show sympathy towards the workforce.

9. Also at the press conference was the leader of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), Mr. Gomolemo Motswaledi and the leader of Botswana National Front (BNF), Mr. Duma Boko, who shared the same sentiments.

   (Daily News, 18 April 2011)

In this brief analysis we will focus on the three clauses containing deontic modality (Clauses 2, 3, and 5) and discuss the effect of these in terms of the range of contributing features set out in Figure 2.

In Clause (2), the deontic source is the BCP President, Mr. Dumelang Saleshando; the primary target is the government, who are construed as agentive, as they have the choice and control over the process of showing commitment. There are no secondary or tertiary interactants (as commitment is analysed as part of the process^[2]), though civil servants are construed as beneficiaries of the process by means of a non-finite clause. The modality is high force and, as with all modal auxiliaries in English, implicitly subjective. The deontic statement is attributed to Mr Saleshando, who is also the source of the modality. The use of the deontic modal here suggests that there is a need to be filled and so realises an evoked negative evaluation of the government in terms of a lack of either tenacity or veracity (or perhaps a blend of both), which are types of social esteem and social sanction within the category of Judgment. In terms of the system of rights and obligations in which this evaluation makes sense, we would initially say that we are in the domain of workers’ rights. However, as we will suggest below, domain is perhaps best understood as a prosodic feature which is shaped by the feel of the text overall rather than simply in terms of single clauses.

In Clause (3), the deontic source is still Mr. Saleshando, and the statement is once again directly attributed to him. In this clause, a passive construction is used to construe the medium grievances by public workers as the primary target with the government as agents and secondary targets. This places the focus on the need for reform rather than on the government’s actions, which are seen as the means to this end. As with Clause (2), the modality is high force and implicitly subjective. The target of the evaluation is the government and the evoked criticism hovers between negative veracity and negative propriety in their dealings with the unions. In these terms, we would analyse the evaluative domain as a combination of workers’ rights, as with Clause (2), but also with a strong suggestion of good governance.

In Clause (5), we once again have Mr. Saleshando as the attributed deontic source, with the construal of the medium public workers’ salaries as primary target again focusing on the need for reform rather than the government’s actions per se. In this clause, this effect is further enhanced through the absence of the government as secondary agentive target. The deontic force is once again high and implicitly subjective, with the third use of must in just three clauses. The evoked evaluation of the government is one of negative propriety, as they are not paying their workers enough, and, in this case, we would suggest that the evaluative domain is once again a blend of workers’ rights and good governance.

Taking these three clauses together we would claim that, while all the criticisms of the government are mitigated through the use of both modality and attribution, the repeated use of high force subjective modality is striking, as this would typically be a feature of editorials rather than hard news stories. Adding to this effect, in Clauses (2) and (3) the author has foregrounded the negative evaluations in the reported statements, with the attribution occurring as almost an afterthought after the quotation. In giving thematic prominence to the modal statements in this way, the author appears to be giving their own advice to the government just as much as reporting Mr. Saleshando’s speech, and the overall prosody of the text works to place it primarily within the domain of good governance, with workers’ rights as subsidiary to this. And at this point we should remember that the article appears in the Daily News, which is a government-owned paper. What we appear to be dealing with in this article, therefore, is not simply a case of repeated mitigation, whereby evaluative load is smuggled into purportedly objective journalism in order to criticise the government, but a blurring of the distinction between authorial and reported voice (cf. Pounds 2010), with the journalist, as author, using attributed sources to ventriloquise their own thoughts in order to advise the government.

6 Conclusion

In this paper, we have shown the range of variation that might come into a discourse analysis of the strategic uses of deontic modality in hard news reporting and discussed interconnecting systems of meaning AND paradigmatic options in each system. For discourse analysis, paradigmatic options and the choices that are not taken are also relevant. As we mentioned in the discussion of deontic beneficiary, the option ‘beneficiary as source’ was not taken up in any of the examples from the data set. However, this option is still relevant as it is indicative of more possible discursive means of using deontic modality to project objectivity in the news.

Having approached the Appraisal network from an alternative network to focus on mitigation rather than affiliation, and having highlighted deontic modality within a system of mitigation strategies, we can now re-embed these perspectives within a more detailed overall system that offers holistic or multiple vantage points leading to new angles of analysis.