Modality, the way of revealing writer's attitude towards events and heroes of a literary text, is divided into epistomic and root types, which differ from the usage of words and stylistic devices. Stylistic devices have always been essential for selecting the modality including the variability of text genres. The research is aimed at determining how the stylistic devices help to express modality in a literary text. Two short stories which have similar plot, yet the expression of the events totally different, are chosen to analyze the attitude of authors. The stories are written by O.Henry and Abdulla Kakhkhor, which is different in language of author as A. Kakhkhor uses proberbs, phrases to express his opinion about situation while O. Henry is fond of making unexpected ending for the reader.

As a result of the research, the epistomic type of modality make reader feel the narrator in the events or situations. The epistemic modality is mostly adressed in the short stories that are analyzed. The writer’s confidence and outlook is activated by perception of external appearances or surroundings.

Modality, stylistic devices, short story, epistemic, deontic, dynamic

A. Kakhkhar Bemor. – Tashkent-2010

O. Henry,cohort story collection “The Trimmed lamp and other stories “, short story “Last leaf”, New York - 1907.

Palmer F. R. Modality in English: Theoretical, descriptive and typological issues. // R. Facchinetti, M. Krug, F. Palmer (Eds.). Modality in contemporary English. – Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. – PP. 1-17.

Semino, E. & Culpeper, J. (Eds.). (2002). Cognitive stylistics: Language and cognition in text analysis. USA: John Benjamins.

Simpson, P. (1993). Language, ideology, and point of view. London: Routledge.

Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A resource book for students. London: Routledge