Chapter I. Text linguistics as a scientific

Mrs. Knatchbole was ugly, she had a goitred neck and a sharp nose with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief (A. Coppard, The Cherry Tree).

The story, the utterance is extracted from, tells us of an eight year old boy from a poor family who constantly annoyed his neighbor Mrs. Knathchbole by making mischief, dog hunting and killing rats. Therefore Mrs. Knathchbole used to complain to the boy’s mother. A detailed description of an angry woman with “a goitred neck”, “a sharp nose”, “a shining nose” creates an unfavourable image of an ugly woman. This insignificant at first sight descriptive detail as- sumes a very important function: to express subjective-evaluative modality, the author’s antipathy to this personage, his aversion for her words and actions, and at the same time his kind feelings for a naughty boy.

So, modality proves to be one of the most essential characteristics of the text, its inherent category. It should be noted that the most com- plete theoretical account of this category is found in many researches (Гальперин, 1981; Якубов, 2006). In our further practical analysis of the language material much attention will be attached to the role of this category in text interpretation.