The Thought Occurs

Monday, 12 May 2025

🕵️‍♂️ The Modal Adjuncts: Field Guide to the Shadiest Order in Linguistics

Official Motto: “It’s not that simple.”

Core Belief: Truth exists… but only with mitigating conditions, temporal modifiers, and room for plausible deniability.


🎭 Known Members

🔹 Probably Phil

  • Wears beige.

  • Once tried to take a position but broke out in hives.

  • Favourite saying: “I mean, it seems that way, doesn’t it?”

🔹 Possibly Pauline

  • Invented the shrug.

  • Leaves all doors slightly ajar.

  • Lives in a house with only frosted windows.

  • Favourite saying: “Well, I wouldn’t rule it out.”

🔹 Surely Susan

  • The evangelical of uncertainty.

  • Uses confidence as a decoy.

  • Favourite saying: “Surely, we can agree… can’t we?”

🔹 Actually Alan (Expelled)

  • Obsessed with correcting everyone.

  • Too certain. Too loud. Used italics in casual speech.

  • Now lives alone with a thesaurus and regret.


🕰 Initiation Ritual

To join the Modal Adjuncts, you must:

  1. Begin a sentence three times, abandoning each attempt halfway.

  2. Hedge a direct answer into a polite evasion.

  3. Casually undermine your own argument with a parenthetical aside.

e.g.,

“Look, I don’t not agree with that, but at the same time, it’s — well, it’s probably more nuanced than that, isn’t it?”


📚 Foundational Texts

  • Modality and Mood: Maybe Means Maybe

  • A Guide to Saying Something Without Actually Saying It

  • The Definite Guide to Indefinite Claims

  • Yes, No, and Everything In Between by Prof. Ambig U. Ous

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