الفهرس 
Objectives of the study
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Abstract
”Hedging” is of crucial importance for communication. People lean
to hedge to achieve some communicative goals such as; expressing
modesty, showing politeness, mitigating unpleasant expressions, toning
down the force of the assertions, avoiding conflict and criticism, showing
diplomacy and creating harmonious interpersonal relationship(Curnick,
2000; Vass, 2004; Williamova, 2005; Cabanes, 2007, Taweel et al.,
2011).
In its literal sense, the term ”hedging” refers to the idea of a barrier,
limit, and defence or to the means used to protect or defened onself. It has
generally been taken to mean those expressions in language which make
messages indeterminate, that is, they convey inexactitude or in one way
or another mitigate or reduce the strength of the assertions that speakers
or writers make (Heng and Tan, 2002, p.6). The term ”hedges” was first
coined by Lakoff G (1972, p. 194). In his pioneering article, ”Hedges: A
study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy sets”, Lakoff refers to
hedges as words whose job is to make things more or less fuzzy.Lakoff
further defines hedges as follows:
For me, some of the most interesting questions are raised by the
study of words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness. Words
whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. I will refer to such
words as hedges (Lakoff, 1972, p.195).
This thesis is an attempt to investigate the influence of ’gender’ on
the use of ’hedging’ in some selected TV interviews in English and
Arabic. To this end, the researcher has divided the study into five
chapters. Chapter one is a general introduction. It includes a background of
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the study, objectives, and research questions, rationale of the study, scope of
the study, hypothesis.It is also a trial to present a brief history for the term
’hedging’, its evolution from the point in which it was first introduced in the
linguistic literature until today. The researcher introduces the different
definitions of ’hedging’ and tries to reach a remarkable definition for the
study. Furthermore, the researcher shed lights on the different functions of
’hedging’ in various discourses and the relationship of hedging to other
linguistic domains such as ’modality’, ’vagueness’, ’politeness’, ’evidentiality’,
’boosters’, ’equivocation’, ’evasion’, ’indirectness’ ,’discourse markers’, and
’gender’.
In chapter two, the researcher tries to make a survey for the
previous studies that attempt to investigate ’hedging’ in various discourses
such as (academic discourse, scientific discourse, political discourse,
economic discourse, cross – cultural and cross –linguistic studies on
hedging, and studies on gender and hedging). The researcher tries to
point out in what way this thesis is different from the other studies
tackled the concept of ’hedging’. Moreover, this chapter is so devoted to
methodology and theoretical framework .Throughout this chapter, the
researcher tries to shed light on the theories and models adopted for the
analysis of the selected data.
In chapter three, the researcher tries to analyze the interviews
where English is the medium. The researcher has divided this chapter into
two sections. Section one is mainly concerned with the analysis of the
five interviews for female interviewees where English is the medium
whereas section two is so devoted to the analysis of the five interviews
for male interviwees where English is the medium as well. In the same
domain, chapter four is so concerned with the analysis of the interviews
where Arabic is the medium. Chapter five shed lights on the findings
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obtained after analyzing the data. Moreover, it presents some suggestions
for further research and the pedagogical implications of the study.
Objectives of the study
1- Surveying the various definitions of ’hedging’ as introduced in the
linguistic literature.
2- Identifying the multiple functions of ’hedging’ in various discourses.
3- Pointing out the relationship of ’hedging’ and other linguistic domains
such as ’modality’, ’vagueness’, ’politeness’, ’evidentiality’,
’equivocation’, ’indirectness’, ’boosters’ and ’gender’.
4- Highlighting the most dominant types and strategies of ’hedging’ in the
data under investigation.
5- Shedding light on the effect of ’gender’ on the use of ’hedging’ in TV
interviews.
6- Pinpointing the significance behind the frequency of some hedging
types in the data under investigation.
Research Questions
1- How is ’hedging’ defined in the linguistic literature ?
2- What are the multiple functions of ’hedging’ in various discourses ?
3- What is the relationship of ’hedging’ and other linguistic domains such
as ’modality’, ’vagueness’, ’politeness’, ’indirectness’ and ’boosters’ ?
4- To what extent can ’gender’ play a role in the use of ’hedging’ in TV
interviews?
5- What are the most dominant types and strategies of ’hedging’ used in
the data under investigation?
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6- What is the significance behind the use of some types of ’hedging’
rather than some other types in the selected data?
Rationale of the study
The choice of this study stems from some reasons:
Firstly, ’hedging’ is of crucial significance to communication in
general and to interviews in particular. Unless the participants in
communication appear modest, considerate, friendly, diplomatic and
appropriate, the flow of communication will be hindered.
Secondly, a great deal of research on ’gender’ and its relation to
’hedging’ has concentrated mainly on the use of individual hedges such as
”you know, kind of, sort of and well” excluding the other types and
strategies of hedging. Therefore, this thesis is an aim to fill this gap. It
tries to investigate hedging from various dimensions (e.g.the syntactic,
semantic, pragmatic and the socio-pragmatic levels).
Thirdly, most of the previous studies on ’hedging’ have been
devoted to English and other languages rather than Arabic(e.g. English vs
Spanish, English vs Chinese, English vs Bulgarian, English vs German,
English vs Turkish, etc.). To this end, this study is a conduct on ’gender’
and its relation to ’hedging’ in some selected TV interviews in both
Arabic and English.
Scope of the study
For limitations, this study is so restricted to TV interviews which
are a subgenre of talk shows, so the researcher has excluded some other
types of talk shows such as radio interviews, debates, sitcoms and some
others. Moreover, the term ’hedging’ overlaps with a wide range of other
linguistic domains, for narrowing down, the study investigates the
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relationship between ’hedging’ and several of them excluding some other
types such as ’vocalizations’, ’hesitations’, ’fillers’ and ’gestures’.
Furthermore, the TV interviews under investigation have been chosen
with due attention to the popularity of both the interviewer and
interviewee and the sensitivity of the topic under discussion.
In addition, there are many factors that may affect the use of
’hedging’ in communication (e.g. age, level of education, social status and
power), This study is so devoted to discuss the effect of ’gender’ on the
use of ’hedging’ in TV interviews excluding the factors mentioned above.
Hypothesis
Men hedge their utterances the same way as women do. It is the
context that represents a pivotal indicator in the frequency of hedging use
in communication in general and TV interviews in particular. Moreover,
the context is of crucial importance in determining the dominant types
and strategies of hedging in both men and women’s speech.
Theoretical Framework
In this section, the researcher discusses the theories as well as the
models adopted in order to account for the various forms and strategies of
’hedging devices’ employed in the data under investigation. To this end,
an eclectic approach has been adopted to be the basis for the thesis,
namely Brown and Levinson’s ’politeness theory’ has been chosen as well
as a combination of some taxonomies of ’hedging devices’ and their forms
applied by some theorists in the field, namely Salager –Meyer’s taxonomy
of hedges (1997), Williamov’s taxonomy of hedges (2005), Martin and
Martin’s typology of hedging (2008) and Fraser’s classifications of hedges
(2010).
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Methodology
In this section, the researcher discusses the theories and the models
adopted for the analysis of the TV interviews under investigation.In
addition, the reseacher sheds light on the methodological tools applied for
the analysis of the data under discussion.
Data
Data consists of twenty interviews. These interviews have been
divided into two groups. The first group consists of ten interviews in
which English is the medium whereas the second group consists of ten
interviews where Arabic is the medium. Each group has been divided into
five interviews for female interviewees and five interviews for male
interviewees as well. The researcher has given due attention to the
popularity of both the interviewer and the interviewee as well as the
sensitivity of the topic under discussion.
Data analysis procedures
Data analysis deals with qualitative and quantative procedures
which involve a careful investigation into the ’hedging markers’ and
strategies in the data under discussion. To do so, there are some steps to
follow:
1) Recording the collected interviews at first;
2) Transcribing each interview in order to extract the ’hedging
devices’;
3) Establishing a frequency count and percentage for each of the
lexical and syntactic ’hedging markers’;
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4) Exploring the main types and strategies of ’hedging’ employed in
the data;
5) Analyzing the basic pragmatic functions of lexical and syntactic
’hedges’ as used contextually in the data;
6) Highlighting the most dominant types and strategies used by each
interviewer;
7) Justifying the dominance of some types and the significance
beyond the frequency of some forms of ’hedging’ rather than some
other types.
Findings
Using the frequency count and percentage, findings show that both
men and women hedge their utterances nearly the same in the selected
interviews under investigation. However, statistics show that women
interviewees where English is the medium hedge their utterances in
almost 7.82 %( see figure.21) whereas their men counterparts hedge their
utterances in about 7.33 %( see figure.22). This shows that women
interviewees where English is the medium hedge their utterances a little
bit higher than their men counterparts. Furthermore, results show that
tentivizers, subjectivity markers, downgraders and modals are the most
dominant types of hedging used by women interviewees where English is
the medium whereas subjectivity markers, clausal mitigators, tentivizers,
modals and downgraders are the most widely used hedging devices
utilized by men interviewees where English is the medium.On the other
hand, in the selected interviews where Arabic is the medium, findings
show that men interviewees hedge their utterances in almost 13 %( see
figure.24) while women interviewees use hedges in nearly 12.95% (see
figure.23). These findings show that men interviewees where Arabic is
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the medium hedge their utterances a little bit higher than their women
counterparts. In the same sense, statistics show that tentivizers, modals,
clausal mitigators, subjectivity markers and approximators are the most
dominant hedging devices used by women interviewees where Arabic is
the medium whereas tentivizers, clausal mitigators, modals, subjectivity
markers, hypothetical constructions and approximators are the most
frequent hedging devices utilized by their men counterparts.
It must be noted here that both men and women interviewees in
which Arabic is the medium hedge their utterances more frequently than
their counterparts where English is the medium(see figures.21,22,23,24)
and this consequently proves what has been hypothesized that is hedging
is ”situationally directed” or it is ”contextually dependant”. The reason
why both men and women interviewees where Arabic is the medium
hedge their utterances more frequently than their counterparts where
English is the medium is that these interviewees where Arabic is the
medium are put in more critical situations as they have got to respond to
questions that may cause harm to their face and the face of their audience
as well. They are also put under the pressure of confessing their seven
sins in life and this causes them to hedge their utterances more frequently
than their counterparts where English is the medium and this proves that
context is the most pivotal indicator in determining the use of hedging.In
the same domain, findings in this particular context disregard what has
been claimed by Lakoff R that hedging is a typical feature of women
expressing their deficiency, powerlessness and inferiority in a maledominating
society, as the hedging devices used by women here express
politeness, diplomacy, friendliness, self-protection, caution and
neutrality. Furthermore, men can hedge their utterances more frequently
than women when it is required.
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Conclusion
This study is an endeavour to conduct a gender-based of hedging in
selected TV interviews in Arabic and English. It shows the different
definitions and functions of hedging in various discourses and genres and
it tries to find out a sort of an agreed upon definition adopted by the many
researchers in the field.Furthermore, the research attempts to consider
other linguistic domains resulting from the use of hedging and its relation
to them such as ”modality, vagueness, indirectness, politeness, evasion,
equivocation, boosters and discourse markers”. In addition, the study
seeks to identify the most dominant types utilized by the participants in
the selected data under investigation and reveals in what way context of
situation has the principal effect on the use of hedging in the selected
interviews under discussion.In the light of the previous discussion, the
study of male and female language in selected TV interviews in Arabic
and English has come up with the following conclusions:
1- Hedging is of crucial importance to spoken discourse in general and
TV interviews in particular since it is used to maintain smooth and
friendly discussion among the participants.
2- Hedges function interpersonally as they occur whenever speakers
want to reduce their commitment towards the truth of a proposition
being conveyed or when they want to mitigate possible negative
illocutionary effects on the audience.
3- Hedges are contextually-dependant since they acquire such an
attribute in the light of the context in which they are used, therefore;
context plays the principal role in determining the type and frequency
of hedging use.
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4- The inappropriate use of hedging devices may lead to
miscommunication and miscomprehension whereas the appropriate
use of these devices shows pragmatic awareness and language
efficiency.
5- Hedging is not a typical feature of women language since men can
lean to use these devices when the situation requires.
6- In some situations, men lean to hedge more frequently than women
when they are put under pressure or in a critical situation. Moreover;
unlike some previous work (e.g., Fishman, 1998; Lakoff, 1975), there
is little evidence of gender differences in the overall rate of usage of
hedged speech here. In short, hedging is not gender-differentiated in
this study, at least in the interviews investigated.
7- Caution, diplomacy, self-protection, self-deference, confrontationavoidance
and friendliness are some of the principal functions of
hedging in TV interviews.
8- Interviewees where Arabic is the medium lean to use hedging devices
with the same function as their counterparts where English is the
medium.
9- Interviewees where Arabic is the medium lean to hedge their
utterances much more higher than their counterparts where English is
the medium and this proves that the use and frequency of hedging is
situationally-dependant. It is not the language that determines the use
and frequency of hedging but it is the situation that can achieve this
goal.
10- The study shows that hedging devices in Arabic have the same roles
as they have in English. They are mainly used to reduce the certainty
and sureness of the utterances. They are also used to decline the
speaker’s responsibility from what is being said or uttered.
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Author’s Name: Waleed Faris AbdAllah
Supervisors’name: Prof. Nagwa IbrahimYounis – Dr. Ahmed Ali Ibrahim
Research title: A Gender - Based Study of Hedging in selected TV
Interviews in English and Arabic
Source: Faculty of Education – Ain Shams University
Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to investigate the effect of gender on the
use of hedging in some selected TV interviews in Arabic and English. It
also seeks to pinpoint the role of context of situation in determining the
use of different types of hedging in discourse in general and the genre of
TV interviews in particular. In the light of Brown and Levinson’s
politeness theory and with the application of a combination of hedging
taxonomies, hedging devices in twenty TV interviews in Arabic and
English are analyzed. By using the frequency count and percentage,
hedging types and their frequency are extracted in the selected TV
interviews under discussion. Findings show that women interviewees
where English is the medium hedge their utterances a little bit higher than
their men counterparts (e.g. women use hedges in almost 7.82%(see
figure.21) while men use hedges in nearly 7.33%(see figure.22) whereas
men interviewees where Arabic is the medium hedge their utterances a
little bit higher than their women counterparts (e.g. men use hedges in
almost 13%(see figure.24) while women use hedges in nearly 12.95%(see
figure.23). These findings prove that hedging is not a typical feature of
women language as it has been claimed by Lakoff R (1975) and also
show that context is the pivotal indicator in determining the type and
frequency of hedging in general and TV interviews in particular.
Key words: hedging - epistemic modality - indirectness – vagueness –
evasion – equivocation – evidentially – boosters – gender – politeness –
discourse markers-talk shows – TV interviews