My reasearch subject is ’The frequency of modal verbs of politeness” applied in the
novel ’’Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. It is a specialised corpus, because it targets one text type which is an only one novel. A specialised corpus is smaller in size compared to a general one. Also, I should apply the internal criteria in my research to investigate the pragmatic features of the modal verbs of politeness. The purpose of my linguistic research is to create a representative corpus which could be able to show how is the frequency of modal verbs of politeness used in that novel. I could say that it is a representative source, so it is relevant. Also, I had consulted the software called ’’MAXQDA” to search how many times the modal verbs of politeness were used in various contexts. The results were: can-202 hits, may-186 hits, shall-158 hits, will-407 hits, could-515 hits, might-200 hits, should-248 hits, would-468 hits. These are the relative frequencies, so it is quantitative. That being said, the corpus is balanced, relevant and reliable.