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Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 15. Number 3, September 2024 Pp.270-282
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Humanities, University of Žilina, Slovakia
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Humanities, University of Žilina, Slovakia
The present research deals with the phenomenon of hedging language, mainly focusing on the context of spontaneous verbal interactions. The main aim of the study is to analyze the occurrence of hedges in English spoken discourse as captured in the Spoken British National Corpus 2014. The research process deals with the differences in the usage of approximators and shields existing among men and women across different age groups and levels of education. The research methodology involves creating six sub-corpora, measuring hedge dispersion, examining selected hedges to ascertain their hedging function within the context and calculating frequencies within each sub-corpus. The research outcomes point to the prevalence of shields in spoken discourse. Plausibility shields are commonly used while attribution shields show lower usage. Adaptors contribute to mitigating certainty in utterances, whereas rounders play a less prominent role. These findings emphasize the nuanced interplay between linguistic strategies and speaker characteristics in spoken communication and highlight the importance of cooperative principles in discourse.
Leláková, E., & Praženicová, D. (2024). Exploring Hedging in Spoken Discourse: Insights from Corpus Analysis. Arab World English Journal, 15(3): .270-282.
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Dr. Eva Leláková works as a senior lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, the University of Žilina, Slovakia. In her research she focuses on the comparative analyses of specific lexico-semantic fields, syntactic structures of literary texts, corpus linguistics and application of the results of the matrix theory in the teaching theory and practice. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5294-2505
Mgr. Diana Praženicová works as a teacher of English and German languages. She studied German language and literature in specialist communication at the University of Saint Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, and English language and literature at the University of Žilina, Slovakia. In her research she focuses on Theory and Practice of English and German language methodology.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-0632-6418