Talk:Hedge (linguistics)

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2019 and 7 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mollyanne99, Sola28. Peer reviewers: Magsmundt, Sarahshealy, Mmicah55, Yangzwk.

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Untitled
This page uses overly complex language. Please help to describe hedging more clearly.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Haleybarton, Joohochung, Willkirton. Peer reviewers: Ericaldagar, Jbergmann5.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:16, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Example
an example of a hedge may help to understand the idea more clearly: I'm not sure if this is right but I've heard it was a secret ceremony in York.

first sentence
"Indirect illocution is an illocutionary act in which the speaker expresses another illocutionary force." What sort of definition uses the root word itself not once but THREE times? In addition to not being very good english... the first sentence is simply gibberish. In the same way that "dynamics is dynamically important to expressing oneself dynamically" is a both a bad definition and gibberish. Novium 20:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Whole article
I have redone the article, not being sure whether the previous version was talking about hedges at all. Comments and improvements welcome. JREL (talk) 11:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel that this article needs to be expanded in examples and quantity of quality information. I feel that the definition and way of describing hedges is put into linguistic jargon and not layman's terms. I also believe that this page needs to be connected to other pages in the linguistic subject, such as tag questions. We also need to format the reference section to the correct format so people can see what citation is claiming what idea.

—Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the united states. London;New York;: Routledge.

I used this textbook in Linguistics 2371 and it provided a good sense of what Hedges are and the proper way to use them. It also explained the when they were used and who used them more often.

—Weatherall, A. (2011). I don't know as a Prepositioned Epistemic Hedge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 44(4), 317. 10.1080/08351813.2011.619310

—Helmer, H., Reineke, S., & Deppermann, A. (2016). A range of uses of negative epistemic constructions in german: ICH WEIß NICHT as a resource for dispreferred actions. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 97-114. 10.1016/j.pragma.2016.06.002

I feel like these will allow me to expand examples into different things we can do with hedging.

—Hosman, L. A., & Siltanen, S. A. (2011). Hedges, tag questions, message processing, and persuasion. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30(3), 341-349. 10.1177/0261927X11407169

I feel that this article would allow us to link Hedging to other linguistic related social markers such as tag questions. Haleybarton (talk) 02:39, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Difference between "For all I know" (truncated) and "All I know"?
This is an excellent article. I believe there might be a difference between saying,

"All I know smoking is harmful to your health." and

"All I know is, smoking is harmful to your health."

Without the "is", I think "all I know" might be a shortening of the expression, " For all I know," which indicates the speaker feels what they state following the expression is possible but is quite unsure.

With the "is", I believe "all I know" means the opposite; that while the speaker is unsure of anything else, they are quite sure of whatever they state following the expression.

Opinions? Lawyer2b 17:38, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

More functions!?
Hedges in general might have different functions apart from signalling uncertainty. a) A hedge like "you know" could also be facilitative in that it invites another speaker to participate. Saying "Yesterday, I went to HMV and bought that red CD, you know, and then I met ..." refers to mutual background knowledge. b) When the hedege "I think" stands in initial position and is stressed, it can also express certainty and can both soften disagreement ("I think you are wrong there.") and strengthen agreement ("I think you are absolutely right."). What I want to say is that hedges can have different functions apart from the one(s) mentioned in the acricle. What do you think?--Wight 07:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * a) I think what you are refering to as "you know" is actually a Filler_(linguistics) aka discourse marker and not a hedge. b) I dont think you have understood the term "hedge" correctly: hedge is used to describe something when they are solely softening the statement. So in your example, you are right to point out that "I think" can be used to strengthen a statement, but in that case, "I think" is not being used as a hegde, but merely the "subject and verb" of the sentence. Ingramhk (talk) 07:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The functions of hedging are not limited to "softening". They can include various kinds of qualification. Hedges include many modal adverbs and functionally similar prepositional phrases.
 * In their book Metaphors We Live By, pages 123-4, Lakoff and Johnson refer to a function of hedges in characterizing the nature of the membership of a specific type of item or individual example of the item in a class or category. Lakoff had a more complete article "Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts", published in Contemporary Research in Philosophical Logic and Linguistic Semantics (1975).
 * From their list of hedges: par excellence, strictly speaking, loosely speaking, technically, to all intents and purposes, in certain respects. DCDuring (talk) 13:29, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Effects on Processing and Examples in Other Languages
I am going to be redoing some of the structure of this article, since in its current form it is very unorganized. Obviously adding a definition section and an examples section. I'm planning to write a section about the effect of hedges on comprehension and their role in discourse.Also I believe that examples of hedges in other languages will be a good tool in showing the general use of hedges cross-linguistically, instead of just providing english examples, which may make the reader think that hedges are an English only act. The following are some sources that I've found that talk about hedges. They are scholarly articles, and actually most of them are studies, that focus on the effects on processing from hedges: Exploring linguistic and cultural variations in the use of hedges in English and Chinese scientific discourse: - Yang, Yingli (May, 2013). "Exploring linguistic and cultural variations in the use of hedges in English and Chinese scientific discourse". Journal of Pragmatics. 50: 23–36 – via Elsevier Science Direct. Check date values in: |date= (help) To hedge or not to hedge: the use of epistemic modal expressions in popular science in English texts, English–German translations, and German original texts: - Kranich, Svenja (1st January, 2011). "To hedge or not to hedge: the use of epistemic modal expressions in popular science in English texts, English–German translations, and German original texts". Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse & Communication Studies. 31: 77–99 – via De Greuyter. Check date values in: |date= (help) The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: a case study of comme and genre: - Hennecke, Inga (June 2015). "The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: a case study of comme and genre" (PDF). Journal of French Language Studies. 27: 1–26 – via Cambridge Core. Willkirton (talk) 01:19, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Hedging in Writing
I plan on research hedging in written form and its effects.

Hennecke, I. (2016). The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: a case study of comme and genre. Journal of French Language Studies, 27(03), 355-380. doi:10.1017/s0959269516000247

Crompton, P. (1997). Hedging in academic writing: Some theoretical problems. English for Specific Purposes, 16(4), 271-287. doi:10.1016/s0889-4906(97)00007-0

Kim, L. C., & Lim, J. M. (2015). Hedging in Academic Writing - A Pedagogically-Motivated Qualitative Study. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 197, 600-607. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.200

--Joohochung (talk) 02:20, 19 February 2018 (UTC)