A modality-based approach to the United Nations Security Council’s ambiguous positioning in the resolutions on the Syrian armed conflict

Abstract

This paper examines the role of deontic and epistemic central modality as a discursive strategy to express vagueness in the United Nations Security Council Resolutions on the Syrian armed conflict. The paper follows a corpus-based methodology with a two-fold objective: (i) identification, quantification and analysis of the central modal verbs retrieved from the resolutions, and (ii) the description of the communicative functions performed by these verbs. Our ultimate aim is to reveal the use of deliberate flexible language leading to ambiguous positioning towards the Syrian armed conflict in the United Nations Security Council Resolutions which have been issued since 2012. The consequences associated with the institutional use of flexible language and ambiguous positioning in the resolutions under study will also be accounted for.