Terminology for Hedging Words

Term for critical hedging words | Mike McDonald | March 4th, 2004

Hi all. I'm trying to write an IIC assignment involving analysis of group feedback on presentations. One of the prominent characteristics of the criticisms that were offered, particularly my own, is the use of "softening" words like "a little bit", "maybe", "I think", and "I guess". For example, instead of saying, "You spoke too fast", I said, "Maybe you could speak a little bit slower."

Is there a technical term for these hedging words? Any references?

Thanks,

Mike McDonald

Re: Term for critical hedging word | Keith Richards | March 4th, 2004

Hi

That's a sticky one. The nearest I can think of is the term "downgrading" which is used in conversation analysis, when the force of something is downplayed in the way it's formulated as part of a response. In this case, though, you don't have anything to compare it with because there's no observable reformulation - it's simply a downgraded form of what could be said.

I know that's stretching the concept, but it's the best I can do. Any other thoughts would be welcome.

All the best

Keith

Re: Term for critical hedging word | Lori Solbakken | March 4th, 2004

Could they be called 'DEtensifiers'? As opposed to 'Intensifiers'?

Lori

Re: Term for critical hedging words | Lori Solbakken | March 4th, 2004

Here's something from Lakoff:

The use of hedge as a linguistic term goes back at least to the early 1970s, when G. Lakoff (1972) published his article Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts. Lakoff was not interested in the communicative value of the use of hedges but was concerned with the logical properties of words and phrases like rather, largely, in a manner of speaking, very, in their ability "to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy" (Lakoff 1972, 195). Interestingly, however, Lakoff also briefly points out the possibility that hedges may "interact with felicity conditions for utterances and with rules of conversation" (Lakoff 1972, 213). In accordance with Lakoff's main concern, however, the term hedge has later been defined, for example by Brown/Levinson (1987, 145) as "a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial or true only in certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected". This definition is interesting in that it includes in hedges both detensifiers and intensifiers, which was how Lakoff also saw hedges. However, many users of the term limit it only to expressions that show that "the match between a piece of knowledge and a category is less than perfect" (Chafe 1986, 270).

Hedging: A Challenge for Pragmatics & Discourse Analysis

Lakoff is great. Love his political stuff too!

Lori

Re: Term for critical hedging words | Mike McDonald | March 4th, 2004

Thanks, Keith and Lori, for those two useful suggestions: downgraders and detensifiers. Lori, that link you gave is really great, and contains several more suggested terms for the expressions I mentioned: it says "a bit" is an example of "phrastic indetermination"   and "I think" is a "hedged performative". Oh boy, don't you love academia?

Cheers,

Mike McDonald

Re: Term for critical hedging words | Sharell | March 4th, 2004

I've enjoyed reading all the comments, and I would just like to add one more term, I was always told they are 'qualifiers'.

Sharell

Japan

Re: Term for critical hedging words | Mike McDonald | March 4th, 2004

Could they be considered as understatement? They share a hint of euphemism but aren't really euphemistic.

Hi Rob.

According to the online article that Lori mentioned in her posting, "understatement" is one of the many terms that have been used to describe words like "a bit". The author writes: "according to Huubler, there are two kinds of indetermination: phrastic and neustic ." This distinction Huubler then carries over to distinguish between *understatements*, i.e. expressions of phrastic [in]determination, and *hedges*, i.e. expressions of neustic indetermination. Thus, a sentence like *It is a bit cold in here* contains an understatement, while *It's cold in

Alaska, I suppose* contains a hedge.

Cheers,

Mike McDonald

 

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