| The forms of hedging vary and can be identified through the linguistic devices and speech acts. Recognizing the forms of hedging in speech acts is as critical as realizing the illocutionary force being performed by the speaker. In political discourse, it is common that speakers use hedging intentionally in defending an opinion or in convincing the interlocutor of an idea. The purpose of this study is to analyze the types of illocutionary force hedges performed by U.S. politicians, President Ronald Reagan and President Barack Obama, in their face--to--face live interviews with media broadcasting channels. Moreover, this study aims to identify the motivations for the politicians to use such hedges. To identify the hedging types, this study used a framework from Bruce Fraser’s compilation of Illocution Force Hedges in his study of “Hedging in Political Discourse’ (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis brought by Van Dijk (2001) and Fairclough (1989), particularly in political discourse, was instrumental for this qualitative study, as it gave the necessary steps to analyze the hedges in their related contexts. The findings indicated that both presidents favored certain forms of illocutionary force hedges based on their utterances, mostly the parenthetic construction, among others, and used them as an imperceptible strategy to mitigate, to safe face, or to equivocate. Furthermore, it was found that in certain cases the hedging was motivated by self--defense mechanism and diplomatic maneuver. However, due to the limitation of obtaining non--contextual data, the frequently used pragmatic markers, in some cases, leave an open interpretation that is worth pursuing in further study. In conclusion, hedging within illocutionary force and with specific motivations is a potent strategy in rhetorical not only to distant the speakers from the propositions but also to bring closer the interlocutors, all of which within the intention of the speakers. |