Ilocos Sur Polytechnic State College

---

Abstract

This descriptive-qualitative study premeditated functions of hedges in a psycholinguistic perspective in presentations of non-native English speakers enrolled at Benguet State University, Philippines.It employed two-way analysis of the hedges used by the different presenters by analyzing first the hedgesthen an interview on the reasons why they have used the hedges in their presentations. Results of the study revealed that there are different hedges used by the presenters. As to the psycholinguistic functions of hedging, four major themes emerged which was collectively referred to as REAL: a) Referencing; b) Emotional and Organizational Construct; c) Agreed Knowledge; and d) Linguistic Access. It was also found that first language has an impact on their use of hedges. Thus, it was concluded thatnon-native speakers of English in graduate studies use hedges in their presentations for various purposes to clearly and effectively express meanings and messages in the academic context. Furthermore, with REAL as a psycholinguistic model or framework, it was highly recommended that other domains of adult speech be explored to expand the understanding of hedging in communication.

Full Article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56901/SYDH8548

References

Alshare, K. & Hindi, N.M., (2004).The importance of presentation skill in the classroom: student and instructors perspective. Journal of Computing Science in Colleges, 19 (4): 6-15.

Channel, J. (200o) Vague language. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Coates, J. (1987). Epistimic modality and spoken discourse.Transaction of the Philological society, 85, 100-131.

Fraser, B.  (2010). Pragmatic competence: the case of hedging. In New Approaches to Hedging, edited by Gunther Kaltenbock, Wilrud Mihatsch and Stefan Achneider.Emerald Group Publishing.

Hua, J. (2011). A study on pragmatic functions of hedges applied by college English teachers in calls. China: School of Foreign Studies, Henan Polytechnic University.

Hyland, K. (1995). The author in the text: Hedging scientific writing. Hong Kong Papers in Linguistics and Language Teaching, 18, 33-42.

Hyland, K. (1998a). Hedging in scientific research articles, volume 54.John Benjamins Publishing.

Hyland, K. (1998b). Boosting, hedging and the negotiation of academic knowledge.TEXT 18 (3) pp.349-382

Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse: Exploring interaction in writing. NY: Continuum Discourse Series.

Lakoff, G. (1972). Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Chicago Linguistic Society Papers, 8, 183-228.

Mariampolski, h. (2016).Qualitative Market Research : A Comprehensive Guide. Retrieve from: https://www.researchgate.net/researcher/27968642_Hy_Mariampolski on July 10, 2017.

Neary-Sundquist, C. (2013). The use of hedges in the speech of ESL learners. Estudios de lingüística inglesa aplicada, 13 (05) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/elia.2013.i13.05

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, Third Edition, Sage Publications, Inc.

Prasithrathsint, A. (2014). The roles of hedges and their linguistic markers in English academic writing.The First International Conference on Language and Linguistics.Language Department, University of Southeaster Pilippines, Davao City.

Prince, et al., (1987).On hedging in physician-physician discourse. In P. Peranteau (ed). Linguistic and the Profession. New Jersy: Balex, Noorwod.

Prokofieva, A. and Hirschberg, J., (2014). Hedging and speaker commitment.@inproceedings{Prokofieva2014HedgingAS,  

Schiffrin, D. (1987).  Discovering the context of an utterance.Linguistics  (25: 1), pp. 11- 32.

Varttala, T. (2001).Remarks on the communicative functions of hedging in popular scientific and specialist research articles on medicine. English for Specific Purposes, 18(2):177–200.

Weinreich, U. (1966). ‘‘On the semantic structure of English’’, in J. H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language.2nd Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 142–217.