Hedge (linguistics)

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A hedge is a mitigating device used to lessen the impact of an utterance. Typically, they are adjectives or adverbs, but can also consist of clauses. It could be regarded as a form of euphemism.

Examples:

1. He is a slightly stupid person. (adverb)
2. There might just be a few insignificant problems we need to address. (adjective)
3. The party was somewhat spoiled by the return of the parents. (adverb)
4. I'm not an expert but you might want to try restarting your computer. (clause)

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 communicate more precisely the degree of accuracy and truth in assessments. For instance, in “All I know is smoking is harmful to your health”, all I know is a hedge that indicates the degree of the speaker’s knowledge instead of only making a statement, “Smoking is harmful to your health”.

Interestingly, from pragmatics aspects, hedges indicate how Gricean maxims are observed. In this case, hedges are markers tied to the expectation of the maxims of quantity, quality, manner, and relevance.

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 and as you probably know. By so saying, the speaker wants to inform that s/he is not only making an assertion but observing the maxim of quantity as well.

2. They told me that they are married.

   If the speaker only says that “they are married” and they do not know for sure if they are married, they may violate the maxim of quality since they say something that they do not know to be true or false. Nevertheless, by adding they told me that, the speaker wants to confirm that they are observing the conversational maxim of quality.
   
   In conversation, speakers may also be aware of the maxim of manner by producing hedges like:

3. 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.

4. 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 want to stop the previous topic.

It seems that when people are involved in conversations, they not only convey information, but they want to verify that how informative, true, relevant and perspicuous information is.

[edit] References

• Grundy, Peter (2000), Doing Pragmatics, London: Arnold.
• Hurford, J.R. and B. Heasley (1997), Semantics: A Course Book, Ho Chi Minh City: Youth Press.
• Levison, Stephen C. (1983), Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press.
• Peccei, Jean Stilwell (2001), Pragmatics, Routledge.
• Thomas, Jenny (1995), Meaning in Interaction, Longman Group Limited.