This collective volume contains a selection of research contributions, presented at the 30th Deutscher Romanistentag [German Conference on Romance languages and literatures] in 2007 in Vienna in the section "Mood and Modality in Romance". The Romance languages studied here include Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan and French. All contributions thematically explore the status and importance of modality and mood and their reciprocal relationships with reference to theoretical approaches.

This study makes an important contribution to the theory of language change by analyzing the evolution of the French modal system from its origins in Late Latin through francais classique, based on newer textual corpora and using the framework of a modal semantic approach. These developments are compared to those of other Romance languages, with the Italian modal system serving as a foil to emphasize contrast."

The democratization of Spain after decades of authoritarian rule involved a profound re-organization of the political discourse and its vocabulary. The study deals with the evolution and further development the post-francoist political language, especially focussing on the interplay of two main tendencies: The impact of long-ranging discursive traditions, on the one hand, and a strong dynamics towards the emergence of a new consensual and standarized linguistic koine, on the other. The monograph studies carefully the ideological, doctrinal and theoretical vocabulary, the different facets of the socio-economic terminology as well as the contribution of metaphorical procedures to the constitution of coherent political discourse and the renewal of its vocabulary.