The author states that modality is not only a linguistic feature but is an essential, though historically changeable element of culture. Modality is the relationship of the subject to his/her own utterances and these utterances to reality. The notion of modality plays an important role in the humanities today (literary criticism, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.) and it is also involved in practical problems of public life (politics, law, the media). Modality is the essence of all verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. The modality of language differs in fact from the text modality but both of them should be described as components of a broader phenomenon, i.e., they are characteristic of the cultural modality of the given epoch (e.g., certainty, doubt, reluctance, fear, etc.). In the author’s opinion the ideas of cognitivism may provide the inspiration for such kind of studies.
