Taxonomy of Hedges Literature Review
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Approximators Adaptors
sort of, kind of somewhat, really, almost, quiet, entirely, a little bit, to some extent,
more or less Rounders
Approximately, essentially,
about, something between..and.., roughly
Shields Plausibility Shields Think, guess, believe, afraid, assume,
suppose , seem, as far as I’m concerned
Attribution Shields someone suggests that ; it is reported that
Approximators refers to “expressions which call change to the original meaning”. They
“express the degree of correctness”. Rounders “indicates the inexact preciseness of
terms
” p.563. Another one, shields “indicates that speakers are not fully committed
to the validity of the
proposition they are conveying” p.563. Plausibility shields
shows
“speakers’ own attitude towards a proposition.” Attribution Shields shows “the
degree of uncertainty towards a proposition to another party” Hua, 2011, pp 563 -564
As what I have mentioned earlier, Crompton 1997 proposes that there can be no fix lexical items to be called as hedges, each scholars
’ view differs from each other. So you can see that Hyland excludes approximators in his model.
‘Approximators’ as hedging however is considered by Crompton 1997 as
“a class of words which most obviously seems to meet G.Lakoff’s original definition”p.281 “words whose job is to
make things fuzzier or less fuzzy ” Lakoff, 1973, p.471. The various taxonomies make
it difficult for the researcher to classify the data, since it has to be done twice according to the two taxonomies. Both taxonomies basically share similar idea and balance each
8 other. Thus, I decided to use Salager-Meyer 1997 taxonomy of hedges, which seems
to meet both previous scholars’ understanding of hedges. This taxonomy also represents “the most widely used hedging category” p.109.
Modal Auxiliary verbs - MAV may, might, could, would, should
Modal Lexical Verbs - MLV to seem, to appear, to believe, to
assume, to suggest, to estimate, to tend, to think, to argue, to indicate, to
propose, to speculate Adjectival, Adverbial, Nominal modal
phrases – A,A,N -MP
Adjective: possible, probable, unlikely. Nouns: assumption, claim, possibility,
estimate, suggestion Adverbs: perhaps, possibly, probably,
practically, likely, presumably, virtually, apparently.
Approximators of Degree, quantity, frequency and time - A-DQFT
Approximately, roughly, about, often, occasionally, generally, usually,
somewhat, somehow, a lot of. Introductory Phrases - IP
Believe, to our knowledge, it is our view that, we feel that
If clauses - IC If true, if anything
Compound Hedges - CH Seems reasonable, looks probable.
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THE STUDY 1.
Context of the Study
This study is carried out in Faculty of Language and Literature, Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Indonesia. It has two programs which are English
Education and English Literature. The subjects of the study are students majoring in English Education. The ease of the researcher to reach the sites were the reason
behind this selection. The students being the subjects are also Non-Native Speaker of English whose mother tongue are not English thus they suit the researcher target
subjects which are L2 learners of English.