Hedging frequently occurs in newspaper articles since it is an efficient strategy to persuade somebody in such a way that readers don´t feel that the ideas are being imposed on them. Hedged expressions are neither true nor false they are somewhere in between and that is exactly the quality that makes them so popular with many writers and speakers. Hedging is often employed when the author is addressing some burning issues of the day since they need to be presented in the most cautious way. So, the use of hedges can tell us a lot about the society we live in. What are the issues speaking and writing on which we use hedged expressions? The analysis of the articles taken from the guardian showed that here belong such topics as: climate change, green house gases; the world cup, economic crisis; south africa; mr. Obama; criminalization; rock music; eu, eu parliament; china; taliban, afganistan; nuclear weapons; iraq, islam, terrorism, hezbollah; homosexuality, homophobia; facebook, twitter; racism; fascism; anti-semitism; domestic assaults, women´s rights; drugs, light drugs, marijuana; medications, treatment.
It was possible to carry out a research in which we concentrated on the distribution of hedges depending on the field of discourse. The material used for the analysis was also taken from the british magazine the guardian. The research showed that the most ‘hedged´ fields of discourse are sport, life and style, books, world news and music. The following chart shows the distribution of hedges depending on the field of discourse.
The total number of the ‘hedged´ texts analyzed is 2083. The number of hedges is measured in percents.
These data give us a general overview of the fields of discourse in which vague categorization is frequently used. It is also relevant from the sociologic point of view as if deals with overall tendencies in our society. It´s obvious that we usually get very emotional when our opinion does not coincide with the opinion of the others. However, as far as we don´t really mean to offend them, we put it mildly. Sport, books, music and films are such things that prove the
The most «hedged» fields of discourse
|
Sphere |
Total |
% |
|
Sport |
423 |
20 |
|
Life and style |
229 |
11 |
|
Books |
166 |
8 |
|
World news |
154 |
7 |
|
Music |
141 |
7 |
|
Film |
118 |
6 |
|
Politics |
111 |
5 |
|
Technology |
90 |
4 |
|
Business |
77 |
4 |
|
Media |
76 |
4 |
|
Environment |
75 |
4 |
|
Tv and radio |
69 |
3 |
|
Art and design |
54 |
3 |
|
Money |
50 |
2 |
|
Society |
45 |
2 |
|
Stage |
44 |
2 |
|
Culture |
36 |
2 |
|
Travel |
34 |
2 |
|
Education |
33 |
2 |
|
Science |
30 |
1 |
|
Public |
14 |
1 |
|
Religion |
9 |
0 |
|
Health care |
5 |
0 |
|
Total |
2083 |
100 |
The english saying ‘tastes differ´. Some people think that the player did his best and the referee was biased. The other considers that the player was bad while the referee was just. Different people read different books, listen to different music and watch different movies. These things are highly subjective and imply personal evaluation.
The research also reveals that some particular hedges are characteristic of a particular social sphere. So, for example, virtually is frequently used while speaking about music, enough to, quasi-are used in connection with politics,
Roughly, practically, in a sense, crypto-, are to be used while discussing books, a true and sort of are characteristic of life and style. Actually is frequently used while urging someone to take measures in order to fight some environmental problems. Technically and suffix -ish are used in sport, particularly in football. Some hedges are more universal, they appear in a wider variety of fields of discourse. Here belong more or less, really, almost, more of a..., practically, pseudo-, kind of, literally, basically, in a manner of speaking.