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results oF the
Computer-assisted textual
analysis
(sometimes yes, sometimes no). Thus, modal verbs
like
may
cause a proposition to become arguable
(Halliday, 1994), thereby lowering the degree of
certainty of a text (Stillar, 1998). This is a strategy
for speakers/writers to mitigate negative content in
order to make it more acceptable to the audience
(Callow, 1998). For a closer inspection of
may
, the
words
might
and
will sometimes/occasionally
also
were examined in view of their similar meanings.
Table 6 shows all co-occurrences of
may
,
might
,
and
will sometimes
/
occasionally
with verbs related
to data handling practices. The results indicate
that the policies contain a large number of vague
and, to some extent, ambiguous statements that do
not specify how user data are actually handled.
They leave the reader in the unknown as to when
and how data are collected or shared and whether
users receive unsolicited marketing communica-
tions. This suggests that the companies use modal
verbs strategically to downplay their questionable
data handling practices and the frequency with
which they occur.
A second KWIC analysis was conducted, ex-
amining
not
and
never
to identify the verbs with
which they co-occur. They were most frequently
found in combination with
collect
(72 times),
share
(51 times),
use
(44 times), and
sell
(33 times).
In general, negative statements suggest that the
speaker/writer is “taking issue with the corre-
To gain additional insights into how companies
communicate data handling practices, the vocabu-
lary used in the privacy policies was examined.
The 10 most frequent content words and their
counts are (1) information (3,023); (2) use (1,339);
(3) site (1,174); (4) may (948); (5) personal (902); (6)
privacy (850); (7) service (811); (8) e-mail (777); (9)
not (753); and (10) will (740). The first three words
on the list —
information
,
use
, and
site
— account
for almost 10% of all content words and the first
10 words for as much as 20%. Also, the 70 most
frequent content words represent 50.10% of all
content words. This suggests that the vocabulary
used in privacy policies is rather homogenous,
which explains why people consider them to be
all the same (Milne & Culnan, 2004).
May
and
not
were the only surprising words among the 10
most frequent words and, thus, were subjected to
KWIC analyses.
The modal verb
may
expresses either permis-
sion (intrinsic modality) or possibility (extrinsic
modality) (Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990). Extrinsic
modality adds intermediate degrees to the choice
between
yes
and
no
either in terms of probability
(maybe yes, maybe no) or in terms of frequency
Table 6. The use of modal verbs in privacy policies
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