Abstract

This paper examines modal auxiliaries in a corpus of consent guidance, with two goals: firstly to explore modal auxiliaries as discursive strategies, and secondly to evaluate their effect. Drawing on a corpus of sexual consent guidance produced by British institutions for young people and professionals who work with them, I combine corpus linguistics and feminist discourse analysis to examine modal auxiliaries. The texts present consent as free, informed, and affirmative. But when talking about abuse, the texts advise young people to ‘say no’ and that they ‘don’t have to’ have sex, thereby representing coercion as able to be resisted and young people’s resistance as a matter of individual choice. I conclude by suggesting strategies for strengthening consent guidance.