Exploring the Relationship Between Modality and Readability Across Different Text Types

With regard to the relationship between the use of modality and readability levels of texts, 2 opposing views have been raised. The first view endorses direct positive relationship between modality and readability in the sense that the use of modality increases textual understandability. The second view is that the use of modality leads to an increase in the number of words, resulting in readability reduction of the texts. Hence, the present study tries to first compare argumentative, expository, and narrative text types in terms of the use of modalities; then, it explores the possible interplay between metadiscourse use and readability indices of the texts. To this end, 33 representative texts from different discourse modes were analyzed in terms of the degrees of idea density and the frequencies of metadiscourse signals. The results of Spearman rank correlation coefficients did not show any statistically significant go-togetherness between metadiscourse use and readability. Moreover, the focused text types were not significantly different in terms of the use of metadiscourse modalities, except for shift topic and hedging markers. Targeting intelligibility indices and stylistic devices as dimensions of textual quality, the present study offers implications for writing research and materials design purposes.