Visitor Guidelines in Art Museum Websites: A Corpus-based Analysis of Modality across Varieties of English

The present dissertation aims to explore the synchronic variation concerning the expression of visitor guidelines in art museum websites across different varieties of English. To gather reliable data, a corpus was built collecting text samples from prestigious art museums in the UK, the US, Italy and the Netherlands. A sub-corpus for each variety was then constructed and analysed, in order to make comparisons between the different varieties of English. The main findings revealed a great use of lexical modals to express modality, especially in the L1 English sub-corpora (British and American English). Conversely, core modals were less frequent across all sub-corpora, followed by semi-modals, which occurred far less in all varieties of English. In accordance with initial hypotheses, a series of distinctions could be highlighted in the way rules and obligations are expressed through various modal expressions in different English varieties. Yet, contrary to predictions, it would be inaccurate to group the L2 English sub-corpora and the L1 English sub-corpora into two categories showing contrasting trends. Future research could further investigate the expression of museum guidelines with the help of a bigger corpus, in order to allow for more general statements on the topic of modality across different varieties of English.