Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Table of contents -- List of Contributors -- Part I: Core modality -- Modals: Striving for control -- Contemporary change in modal usage in spoken British English: mapping the impact of "genre" -- Where have all the modals gone? An essay on the declining frequency of core modal auxiliaries in recent standard English -- Part II: Peripheral modality -- Had better, 'd better and better: Diachronic and transatlantic variation -- Grammatical colloquialism and the English quasi-modals: a comparative study -- Modal necessity and impersonality in English and Galician -- Modal uses of the English present progressive -- On the generic argument for the modality of will -- Part III: Evidentiality and Modality -- REALITY and related concepts: towards a semantic-pragmatic map of English adverbs -- A cross-linguistic look at the multifunctionality of the English verb seem -- Annotating English adverbials for the categories of epistemic modality and evidentiality -- Part IV: Evidentiality and Modality in Discourse -- Modal verbs in news-related blogs: When the blogger counts -- Modality and personal pronouns as indexical markers of stance: Intersubjective positioning and construction of public identity in media interviews -- Stancetaking and inter/subjectivity in the Iraq Inquiry: Blair vs. Brown -- Subject index