MODALITY IN THE JAKARTA POST EDITORIALS

This thesis deals with modality in the Jakarta Post editorials. The objectives are to investigate the occurrences of modality in Indonesian newspaper texts written in English. The research attempts to analyze the type of modality used in the Jakarta Post editorials, what is the most dominant type, to reveal the realization of modality in the editorial texts and to investigate why modality is used the way it is in the Jakarta Post editorials. In analyzing the data, Hallidays theory of modality is applied and the findings indicate that the Jakarta Post uses the four types of modality in their editorial texts. The four types are Probability, Usuality, Obligation and Inclination. The most dominant type existing in each text is Probability. Congruent meanings are used more than metaphorical, and Low Probability is the most dominant in terms of value. The findings also show that the Jakarta Post editorials writer uses higher counts of modality when the issue is about politic. Higher counts of modality indicates that the editorial writer has a strong certainty in giving his opinions and judgments. However, when the issues are considered sensitive such as religious blasphemy or commemoration of bombing victims, the clauses with modality used in the editorial text are only a few. This is caused by the intention of the editorial writer to be cautious and chooses instead to just simply deliver the information and facts without having to interfere the condition with his personal judgments. The use of Probability as the most dominant type is also influenced by social context which in this case, context of situation. One variable in the context of situation is tenor. Tenor refers to the people involved in the communication, the relationship between them and how sure you are in giving the information.