Modality in Parliamentary Debates

Parliamentary debate is one of the spoken genres involving key political actors that indirectly highlight social relations through the elements of language used. As such, the analysis of modality in speech clauses is one of the preliminary study that can highlight the role of social actors and their audiences through language. This paper aims to identify and describe aspects of the meaning of modalities used by members of the Government and Opposition in the Parliamentary debate as a way of constructing social relations with their discourse audience. The parliamentary debate selected for the purpose of this analysis is the Budget 2019 debate, the first budget debate after the 14th General Election (2018) and after the transition of power in the New Malaysia era. The analysis used qualitative method, adopting Fairclough's (1992 & 1995) critical discourse analysis approach. The results of the study, revealed thirteen (13) modalities utilized by both the members of Parliament and Opposition. The findings show that informative modality and command modality are utilized by both parties. The use of informative modality is higher frequency, which is 777 times compared to the command modality of only 282 times. Opposition discourse is seen to dominate the use of informative modality with a frequency of 419 times through the meaning of will, ability, knowledge, and refusal more than Government discourse. Government discourse is seen to be more dominant in the use of command modality for the purpose of demand with a frequency of 147 times through the use of the word modality must and should be dominant than the Opposition. It is clear that the use of the word modality by the Opposition discourse is more informative to its audience, while the Government discourse is more in control of its audience. Thus, it can be described that the form of social relations built between the Opposition discourse is more relaxed, and for Government discourse is more formal and serious with the public.