Epistemic Modality Degrees of Chinese Fortune Sticks’ Prophecies: A Case Study of Watthaisamakkhee’s Prophecies in Chinese fortune sticks
Keywords:
Degrees of semantic denotations in epistemic modality, Prophecies, Chinese fortune sticksAbstract
Abstract
The practice of Chinese fortune sticks is a kind of fortune-telling that can be accessed easily by all genders and all ages while visiting the temples in Thailand for them to make merit. In addition, it is popular activity among Thai people. This study examined degree of epistemic modality in Chinese fortune sticks’ prophecies that appear in different topics, such as finance, work, health and love. The data collection was gathered from Watthaisamakkhee, Mae Kasa, Mae Sot District, Tak Province. To ensure the reliability of the written prophecies used in this study, the researcher selected the written prophecies translated by an assistant professor from a prestigious university in Thailand. The data collection in this study was 28 written prophecies translated into English which were made up of 49 sentences. The data collection was collected in Microsoft Excel. The data analysis followed thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke (2006), which are divided into 6 stages for qualitative analysis. The results in this study show that the epistemic modality with the level of probability was the highest at 93.88 percent. Moreover, approximately 90 percent of the written prophecies were written with positive semantic denotations, while only 10 percent were written with negative semantic denotations. It is expected that the results of this study will be useful for learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in order to study epistemic modality marked in different texts and be able to apply them in actual use correctly and approximately.
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