ABSTRACT
REPORTING This discourse category comprises those cases in which the modal auxiliaries seem to be performing a descriptive function without, for the main part, any explicit expression of personal affect toward what is being described, overt assessment or evaluation of the event or situation, and in the absence of explicitly reflective elements. of course the fact that an event or situation is being described or reported on at all means it cannot be neutrally charged in this context.1 However this category is trying to account for those cases in which the speaker appears to adopt the role of a reporter laying out the facts in order to make a later commentary.
