A Pragmatic Analysis of the Pedagogical Implications of the Use of English Epistemic Modality Written Literary Discourse

This is a pragmatic study of the use of the items of epistemic modality in a literary discourse with the main aims to identify, analyze and describe the ways the items of epistemic modality are used. Their contextual meanings, functions, and implication to the pedagogical attempts are also unfolded. The results of the interpretative and descriptive analysis reveal that the items of epistemic modality are found to be very dominant which also suggests that the genre of narrative fiction is linguistically characterized by the utterances that are established on the basis of knowledge and reasoning. The items of epistemic modality are found to be polysemous and polyfunctional which are reflected pragmatically in the forms of politeness, negotiative and constructive functions. All these lead to the acknowledgement that the use of the items of linguistic modality in literary discourse and their usage for language teaching in the applied linguistic contexts is worth conducting

A Representation of Character Education Values Through Figurative Lives of the Geishas in Snow Country: A New Historicism Perspective

Snow Country is the story about the figurative lives of geishas in Japanese society. As a Nobel Prize recipient Snow Country is widely considered to be a masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan, from which the writer configure and represent various cultural and educational values within Japanese community. These values are expressed through a beautiful narration of the life of three important figures, Shimamura the guest and Komako the country geisha, and another country geisha names Yoko. Shimamura somehow likes Komako and therefore visits the resort a few times. Komako really likes Shimamura that she has done a lot of things like a crazy person in love. In addition, there is a bit of healthy competition going on between Komako and Yoko which symbolizes the practices of ‘competitive' life surrounding the Japanese. Here, as a part of cultural and educational value, the life of ‘modern' geisha has been justified as one of the ways to keep and sustain Japanese old tradition which have become the basis of most educational practices in the country which worth following