This study focuses on the discourse prosody of three core English modal verbs in three different genres associated with the Scottish ship RMS Queen Elizabeth. The three genres are business letters, newspaper articles and a brochure which are kept at the University of Glasgow archive. The aim of the study was to investigate the lexical behaviour of the nine modal verbs in terms of their discourse prosody as they appear in the texts surrounded by the neighbouring words. This is also to determine whether the discourse prosody of the modal verbs was influenced by the presence of the meaning carried by the neighbouring words. The analysis was performed on Lawrence Anthony’s ANTCONC software and it was found that the discourse prosody of the three modal verbs was indeed influenced by the neighbouring lexical items. The findings implied that future studies in the lexical patterns of any particular word should consider the close relationship between the word and its neighbouring lexical environment. Another implication also suggests the need for future investigations into the influence of social, political and economic impact of an event or occurrence on journalistic writing practices in different eras.