User:Haleybarton/sandbox

Draft of improvements to Hedge (linguistics)
In pragmatics (a sub-field of linguistics), a hedge is a mitigating word, sound or construction used to lessen the impact of an utterance due to constraints on the interaction between the speaker and addressee, such as politeness, softening the blow, avoiding the appearance of bragging and others. Typically, they are adjectives or adverbs, but can also consist of clauses such as one use of tag questions. It could be regarded as a form of euphemism. Hedges are considered in Linguistics to be tools of Epistemic modality; allowing the speaker to signal his or her degree of confidence in a connected assertion. Hedges are also used to distinguish items into multiple categories, where items can be in a certain category to an extent.

Hedges and Their Uses
Hedges may take the form of many different parts of speech, for example:
 * 1) There might just be a few insignificant problems we need to address. (adjective)
 * 2) The party was somewhat spoiled by the return of the parents. (adverb)
 * 3) I'm not an expert but you might want to try restarting your computer. (clause)
 * 4) That's false, isn't it?  (tag question clause)

Epistemic Hedges:

In some cases, "I don't know" functions as a prepositioned hedge—a forward-looking stance marker displaying that the speaker is not fully committed to what follows in their turn of talk

Hedges may intentionally or unintentionally be employed in both spoken and written language since they are crucially important in communication. Hedges help speakers and writers indicate more precisely how the cooperative principle (expectations of quantity, quality, manner, and relevance) is observed in assessments. For example,
 * 1) All I know is smoking is harmful to your health.
 * In (1), it can be observed that information conveyed by the speaker is limited by adding all I know. By so saying, the speaker wants to inform that they are not only making an assertion but observing the maxim of quantity as well.
 * 1) They told me that they are married.
 * If the speaker were to say simply They are married and did not know for sure if that were the case, they might violate the maxim of quality, since they were saying something that they do not know to be true or false. By prefacing the remark with They told me that, the speaker wants to confirm that they are observing the conversational maxim of quality.
 * 1) I am not sure if all of these are clear to you, but this is what I know.
 * The above example (3) shows that hedges are good indications the speakers are not only conscious of the maxim of manner, but they are also trying to observe them.
 * 1) By the way, you like this car?
 * By using by the way, what has been said by the speakers is not relevant to the moment in which the conversation takes place. Such a hedge can be found in the middle of speakers' conversation as the speaker wants to switch to another topic that is different from the previous one. Therefore, by the way functions as a hedge indicating that the speaker wants to drift into another topic or to stop the previous topic

Hedges in different Languages
Hedges are used as a tool of communication and are found in all of the world's languages. Examples of hedges in languages besides English are as follow:


 * genre (French)
 * Il était, genre, grand

Hedges in Fuzzy Language
Fuzzy language means that it is unclear or vague. Hedges can make sentences fuzzy or less fuzzy. Hedges in fuzzy language can be used to create sarcasm to make sentences more vague in written form.


 * 1) Joseph is works really hard.
 * In this sentence, the word really can make the sentence fuzzy depending on the tone of the sentence. It could be serious (where Joseph is really hard working and deserves a raise or promotion) or sarcastic (where Joseph is not contributing to the work).

Hedge Article Contribution
'''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. I feel that the definition and way of describing hedges is put into linguistic jargon and not layman's terms.'''

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.

Hennecke, I. (2016;2017;). The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: A case study of comme and genre. Journal of French Language Studies, 27(3), 1-26. 10.1017/S0959269516000247

'''I feel that this will add substantial quality of understanding to the article. I chose not to post this to the talk page as I see William has already done so.'''
 * Claridge, C. (2013). The evolution of three pragmatic markers as it were, so to speak/say and if you like. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 14(2), 161-184. 10.1075/jhp.14.2.01cla

Evaluating Article and Sources
I will be evaluating the Truth condition article.

I feel that the first paragraph of this article jumps around from sentence to sentence and makes me confused. The first sentence, that is supposed to be direct and clear makes me confused because the wording is strange. It also goes into jargon that isn't necessarily known too well, ordered pairs.

I felt that other areas that study truth conditions are severely under-represented. The article only talks about semantics even though truth conditions are heavily involved in philosophy and pragmatics as well.

This article had no citations, which is a big issue. None of the facts or examples that are written have a reliable source to back them up.

I believe there are many items that his article is missing, not only with citations, but also to what it is connected to. The article isn't even linked to "Linguistics" or "Philosophy" even though it is involved in "WikiProject Philosophy."

The only items on the talk page are from Jbergmann5 from our class pointing out some possibly biased statements.

Planned contributions to Hedge (linguistics)

 * The introduction seems to be not thoroughly fleshed out. I plan to write more in this paragraph, and provide an easily understandable overview of Hedges.
 * The article is not sectioned at all, and needs to be better organized. I will provide a better layout for the article and make sure it is easily navigable, and not just I section of unorganized information.
 * I also plan to bring a few examples of hedges from other languages into the examples in this article.
 * I will also add a bit about the effect of hedges on meaning and comprehension.