This volume is a collection of sixteen papers, mainly arising from a conference in Verona, Italy, in 2001. There is a nine-page preface, though no concluding section, by the editors. The preface is mostly devoted to summaries of the individual chapters, except for an initial introduction of about one page. In it the editors aver that “all of these papers offer fresh methodological impetus to a variety of current linguistic debates” but also refer to “differences in theoretical perspectives, terminology and topics.” Differences in topics are of course desirable, but differences in core terminology are less so. An attempt on the part of the editors to comment on differences in terminology in studies on modality in general, or at least in those of the present volume, would have been welcome and might have enhanced the “methodological impetus” of which the editors speak. It would also have increased the interest of the volume for the reader wishing to gain a sense of the state of the art in the well-researched field of modality at the beginning of the new century.

However, the volume does contain several valuable and well-written contributions. The one that probably does more than any other to fulfill the promise inherent in the book's title is by Geoffrey Leech. In “Modality on the move: The English modal auxiliaries 1961–1992,” he examines and compares the incidence of modals around 1961 and 1991, mainly on the basis of the LOB and Brown Corpora and the follow-up corpora prepared at Freiburg (FLOB and Frown), with additional data from two smaller corpora of spoken British English. On the basis of a careful study of the material, he concludes that the frequencies of modals have gone down in general, and those of certain modals, including must and shall, have gone down more dramatically than those of others (228 f.).

Yet Leech is also careful to note, on the basis of the same corpora, that it is not simply a case of semi-modals taking over. While certain semi-modals, including need to, have increased in frequency, some others, including be to, have in fact declined, and overall the rise in the frequency of some semi-modals does not make up for the losses of modals (229 f.). Leech is cautious in his comments but still offers the commonsense suggestion that the decrease in the use of must, for instance, may have to do with “a tendency to suppress or avoid overt claims to power and authority by the speaker or writer” (237). He places the changes in the frequencies of modals in the larger context of change in British and American English. While there are some pieces of counterevidence, Leech also endorses the highly interesting hypothesis that “many changes in recent English have been led by American English, with British English following on in its wake, rather than vice versa” (227). The article is well argued and stimulating.

In “Changes in the modals and semi-modals of strong obligation and epistemic necessity in recent British English,” Nicholas Smith, working with much the same corpora as Leech, confirms the decline of must, and similarly suggests that “because it is prototypically subjective and insistent, sometimes authoritarian-sounding, root MUST is likely to be increasingly avoided in a culture where overt markers of power or hierarchy are much less in favour” (263). Smith also examines the role of genre distribution in the case of must, have to, and need to in the LOB and FLOB corpora (251 f.), noting that have to has largely maintained itself, and that need to has become more prominent (263).

In another valuable paper, “Pragmatic and sociological constraints on the functions of may in contemporary British English,” Roberta Facchinetti draws on the British Component of the International Corpus of English to examine syntactic and semantic properties of the core modal may in current British English. She also takes careful account of genre in her study, and one of her findings concerns the important role played by may in expressing what she calls existential possibility: In the case of epistemic possibility “the speaker/writer puts forward his/her point of view quite overtly” (308), but as regards existential possibility, “the claims made with may can be tested and checked against objective data” (305).

Going beyond the study of core modals, three chapters deserve to be singled out for attention. Carita Paradis's “Between epistemic modality and degree: The case of really” presents a useful case study of really, based on solid empirical evidence drawn partly from the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage English, which is part of the British National Corpus. She identifies three different uses of really: “truth attesting of propositions,” as in Really, they are quite strange; “subjective judgement of the importance of a situation involved in the proposition,” as in I really appreciate your support; and “reinforcement of scalar property,” as in They are really nice (194). She also carefully examines the intonational contours involved.

Jennifer Coates, in “The role of epistemic modality in women's talk,” increases the interest of the volume for readers who are not hard-core grammarians of English. Adopting a broad view of the notion of modality, she examines the use of expressions such as I mean, well, just, and sort of in a corpus of women's conversation. It would have been helpful to have further information, perhaps in a footnote, about the nature of the corpus and whether it is available to other scholars, but she makes several valuable points in her article. For instance, drawing in part on earlier work by Edelsky 1981, she introduces the notion of a collaborative floor: While in the well-known Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974 format, speakers speak one at a time, “the defining characteristic of the collaborative floor is that the floor is potentially open to all participants simultaneously” (342). The use of epistemic modality forms is then not a sign of weakness or of unassertiveness on the part of women, but “a resource of doing friendship” (346).

Of the other contributions, Philippe Bourdin's “On two distinct uses of go as a conjoined marker of evaluative modality” deserves mention. He draws partly on the British National Corpus and discusses the combinations go un-V-en, as in go undetected, and go V-ing, as in go thinking. Although he might have used a specific corpus or specific corpora more systematically, the article brings up fresh perspectives on two constructions in English that are still to be fully treated in the literature.

The chapters commented on above have been singled out for attention here because they are well argued and well researched, and because they examine important, well-defined questions in the area of modality in contemporary English. In addition, they are also among those contributions in the book that make essential use of authentic data as the basis of analysis. It bears noting that there are chapters in the volume that are largely – or even exclusively – based on introspection. Introspection remains a possible source of data in the study of language, and in some areas of syntax it is indispensable. However, in the study of constructions as complex and context-dependent as those involving modals, it is helpful not to rely solely on decontextualized examples invented by the analyst. By contrast, in corpus data modals can be viewed in their context of use, and the study of authentic examples, moreover, may bring up properties – for instance, about collocational patterns or preferences of modals – that the analyst relying solely on introspection may easily overlook. The articles singled out for attention above, in part because they draw on authentic data, do open up new methodological perspectives for the study of modals in the twenty-first century, making the present book a welcome addition to the voluminous literature on modality in English.