Mood and modality in Spanish and English history textbooks: The construction of authority

Abstract

It has been noted that school textbooks feature less hedging than other genres of academic writing. This is corroborated here through an analysis of mood and modality in American and Spanish history textbooks. This article argues that there are two main factors which influence the use of these devices. The first is the authority appropriated by the textbook author, and inherent in the relationship constructed between the writer and the student reader, and beyond that in the wider educational context itself. The second is the desire of history textbook writers to present their interpretations as more or less open to negotiation, influenced to some degree by the perceived measure of consensus on given interpretations. The results of an analysis of mood and modality, as well as other ways of hedging and boosting propositions, show that the use of these devices in history textbook writing is similar to their use in the hard sciences, thus showing a tendency on the part of history textbook writers to present their interpretations of historical events as objective, as more 'factual'. Differences across the two corpora can be explained by looking into the wider educational background of the two countries, and into notions of authority.

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