Hedging in political discourse

T he phenomenon of hedging in linguistics is extremely diverse and includes many types and types of language tools: discursive words, word-building elements, quotes, as well as extra-linguistic means. C ase tools allow you to include in the study area of linguistic elements that were not previously investigated with confirmation on large arrays of authentic data. S o, recently the attention of corpus linguists was attracted by so-called clusters.

C lusters are understood to consist of 2−5 components of a chain of words that are located contact and are reproduced in speech in the form of integral revolutions. T hese include both recurrent complete sentences, and structurally incomplete combinations of significant and official words or only official words. In recent studies, with the support of corpus data, grammatically incomplete chains of contact-arranged words are often distinguished by means of exclusively frequency indices. I n the LGSWE body grammar, whose authors adhere to only the quantitative approach, such threeand four-component chains of words, occurring with a frequency of 10 and 20 times for each million uses, are assigned the term lexical bundles — lexical bundles, of the, do you, one of the, I think it’s, the gray of. T he frequency of the use of lexical beams (or clusters), according to a number of scientists, calls for further understanding of their pragmatic functions in communication.

S ome of the clusters thus allocated are only the result of the high frequency of their constituents, such as the definite article, etc. H owever, some clusters can perform hedging functions. F or example, the string a bit of performs a pronounced pragmatic downtoner function: It was a bit of a problem / mess / nuisance. C.

ase studies confirm that, as a rule, a cluster is used in combination with negatively connotated nouns, mitigating their negative impact [O'Keeffe et al., 2007]. P reviously, traditional grammars did not consider such elements as important components of the typology of speech facilities. M oreover, the presence of such inclusions in speech was considered as a lack of thought processes, undeveloped speech skills. H owever, a comparative analysis of the frequency of clusters and individual words suggests that some clusters occur more frequently in speech than single words. S.

uch a high frequency indicates their important pragmatic functions, in particular, as a means of hedging. A closer look at the use of hedging reveals a number of communicative strategies that speakers implement with hedge funds. W e combine all such strategies under the general term «hedging strategies». One of the most frequent strategies is the speaker’s focus on reducing the categorical statements. I n the scientific literature there are descriptions of communicative strategies related to hedging, which can be conditionally divided into 1) Displays of politeness (tact, modesty with respect to the addressee, restriction or mitigation of the truth of one’s own statements in the absence of confidence in the accuracy of information), 2) The desire to protect oneself from possible criticism (an attempt to escape from a direct statement, an attempt to hide personal insecurity, intentional inaccuracy when referring to numerical values, smoothing out direct statements maximum objective picture information distancing from incorrect interpretation. In specialized contexts, such as scientific speech, hedging provides the speaker or writer with a means of protecting against possible criticism. F or example, at first glance an inconspicuous, accidentally dropped hedge — there are perhaps 1,500 such cases a year …

— will protect the speaker from accusation of assuming an actual error in case of criticism. It is interesting that the adverb is invariably (one of the most frequent in the scientific discourse of adverbs) can be used both in the literal meaning always and always / almost always. According to various sources, including modern case grammars, the most frequent linguistic means of hedging include:

• Modal verbs and verbs with modal meanings — believe, guess, feel, recon, suppose, think, imagine, especially in conjunction with pronoun I;

• Nouns — there is a possibility, the thing is, and so on;

• Adverbs — quite, really, relatively, necessarily, just, only, of course, actually, kind of, sort of, maybe; • Indirect questions with modality (indirect questions) — And would you have thought you were very close to him? instead, for example, And were you very close to him ?

• Double negation — It’s not that I am not afraid; • the qualifying clause of the whole situation that evaluates the whole situation. — You got them to do this cross-group reporting, which was a good idea, but the time was the problem;

• O nlineness features such as self-correction, repetition, hesitation, false starts, i.e., edits that usually occur in the authentic process of generating unprepared oral speech. — A nd will you, would you like to go sort of on a sun and sea holiday with him this year? Since hedging in the English language is manifested through a wide variety of linguistic and extra-linguistic means, interlanguage comparisons, firstly, are not automatically formed, and secondly, are often not realized by communicants and, as a result, are extremely difficult. I t is the high variability of hedging tools that necessitates awareness-raising of representatives of various linguocultures, trainees, teachers in relation to their application. T he fact that the training of the hedging units should be incorporated into the foreign language course follows from the dissimilarity of cultures and the means to achieve correctness and courtesy of the utterance.

S o, for example, in Russian culture, affectionate diminutive suffixes are frequency-like as morphological means of expressing courtesy, friendliness and softening of utterance. S.G. Ter-Minasova notes that diminutive and affectionate suffixes are joined with equal enthusiasm by Russian people to both animate and inanimate objects.