Determining the Role of Hedging Devices in the Political Discourse of Two American Presidentiables in 2008  

Oleh:

Al-Rashady, Fahad

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: TESOL Journal vol. 7 (Dec. 2012), page 30-42.
Topik: Political Discourse; American Presidentiables
Fulltext: Determining the Role.pdf (208.05KB)

Isi artikel

The use of hedging devices or expressions that convey inexactitude in political discourses may mitigate the strength of the assertions intended in written and oral communication (Martin- Martin, 2009). This study aims to investigate how hedging devices serve a function as discourse politics strategy. Specifically, it focuses on the analysis of the three presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain during the 2008 US election cycle. Using the descriptivequantitative research design, hedging devices and their functions are qualitatively and quantitatively treated following the frameworks of Hyland (2005), Salager-Meyer (1997), and Martin-Martin (2008). The mixed method of discourse analysis, survey, and focus group discussion were used to gather, validate, and analyze data from the target respondents consisting of 35 graduate students pursuing language-related studies.Initial analysis reveals that hedging devices are also prominently used in the spoken discourse specifically in the context of politics or political debate and that they can be categorized into different types such as modal auxiliary verbs; modal lexical verbs; adjectival, adverbial, nominal modal phrases and approximators, among others. As indicated, some types are more dominant than the others. Another is that hedging devices also serve different functions depending on the intention or purpose of the speaker. Furthermore, the frequent use of certain hedging devices including can, will, should, I think, among others, appears to significantly promote the effectiveness of a speaker’s argument.

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