The study of modality in the novel of "My Dear Husband" by Fariba Kalhor based on Fowler’s view

In every text, the beliefs, feelings, prejudices, and attitudes of the author is reflected in a way that indicates his stance. With regard to this fact, no novel is objective and neutral and the author, in any case, cautiously or incautiously shows his stance. This stance can be surveyed in different levels of language, including phonology, morphology, and syntax. Among these three , syntax is ideologically more important. Ideology shows itself in the syntax of a text.Accordingly,  the author.   chooses a special type of grammatical pattern. By surveying this grammatical pattern, the relationship between language and view of the author can be identified. "Modality" is one of the most important grammatical categories which shows the author's stance in a text. Based on the definition provided by stylists, modality is the potential power of language to reflect the attitudes of the author about the sentence expressed. In every text, the author's attitudes may include a range of his reactions such as wish, desire, duty, obligation, certainty, and uncertainty. Researches, concerning modality in the novels written by women, show that modality is restricted to "verb" and other modality maker elements are ignored. But as a matter of fact, in addition to verb, this stance appears in other grammatical categories, such as adverbs and adjectives. Most world literary texts are ideologically influenced.  In recent decades in Iran, the spread of "feminism" as the governing ideology in literature led to the creation of provocative novels about women subjects, their relationships, and social rights. In this article, one of these novels, "My Dear Husband" written by "Fariba Kalhoor" is surveyed. She is known by writing more than one thousand stories and rewriting more ancient works named "The lady of one Thousand Stories". "My Dear Husband" is one of her effective works which is written by women and for them. In this article, based on the Fowler's (2016) view, "modality" is studied. To him, modality appears in texts by using syntactic elements. These syntactic elements are as follows: a) use of modals, b) use of modal adverbial phrases, c) use of adjectives and adverbs as specifiers, d) use of feeling verbs, and e) use of short sayings. To Fowler, these five elements can enable one to understand the writer's stance. The purpose of this study is to determine which type of modality is used in this novel and what aspects of feminist style is applied in this regard.. Based on this research, the frequently used types of modalities of this novel are as follows: modality of verbs (epistemic, interrogative, and emotional), adverbial and adjective modalities. These modalities, express concepts of dubiety and uncertainty which are of the characteristics of feminine style. Based on the data surveyed, five types of modality are applied in this novel and each represents different concepts. In the examined novel, interrogative modality is frequently used. This shows that women are less confident in themselves and their thoughts in comparison to men. The narrator also makes mental questions when she encounters events or the behavior of the people around her. The narrator often replies the questions, raised by other characters, in her mind and this shows her uncertainty. Next, emotional modality   is frequently used in this novel. The reason for using this modality is because women are emotional themselves; therefore, they use short and independent sentences with emotional load more. In this novel, the frequency of the use of short sentences accelerates the text and makes it exciting. In addition to these modalities, adverbial one is the other feature of the novel "My Dear Husband". Therefore, in this novel, different adverbs show different features of women, such as exaggeration and doubt. As women have been put in weak stance, they use adverbs which indicate uncertainty. They do not speak with certainty and confidence. And finally, another type of modality, which is applied in this novel, is adjective modality which helps to the making of certain unique adjectives. This shows the judgment of the writer about her characters in this novel. The results of this article show that how utilization of different types of modalities can reflect the feminist style of the writer,i.e. Fariba Kalhor. This indeed does not mean that these types of modalities are only pertinent to women's works and are never utilized in men's works; nonetheless, it indicates that their frequency of occurrence in women's works is more.