HEDGING IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF DISCOURSE

Authors
T. I. Gribanova
Affiliation
Moscow State Linguistic University
Issue 35
Pages
7-24

The article describes discourse features of some of the most common hedges observed in modern English and explores their communicative impact on the utterance. The authors apply Prince et al.’s classification of hedges into approximators (modify the propositional content conveyed in the utterance) and shields (modify the truth value of the utterance) to the analysis of speakers’ hedging behaviour in two discourse genres: the interview and political speeches.

The choice of the materials for the analysis is determined by the researchers’ practical interest to the study of the usage of hedges in discourse genres that differ considerably in the degree of spontaneity and presuppose solution of different aims. Although there is a great diversity of linguistic units which can function as hedges, they fall under the two major groups mentioned above.

The aim of the paper is to identify the most common types of hedges used in the two types of discourse, study their structural types, pragmatic features and account for their usage in the given type of discourse. The study is conducted within the framework of contemporary linguistics, such as functional grammar, pragmatics and comparative analysis. The authors make inferences about the nature of hedging, key features of hedges and their discourse-marked specifics.

For citation

Gribanova, T. I. (2019). Hedging in different types of discourse. Issues of Applied Linguistics, 35, 7-24. doi: 10.25076/vpl.35.01

This artiсle is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.