Abstract
The present work is an attempt to develop a database of hedges to study the usage and effects of hedges in women writings. ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, a work of eighteenth century British-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft is compared with a 1970 book ‘The Female Eunuch’ by Germaine Greer. To exploit the functions of linguistic devices of hedges, frequently used hedges in most cited articles are categorized on the basis of the paradigms proposed by Hyland and Yu. Frequencies of various hedges are counted through a computer program written in ‘C’ language. Every hedge category is given a weight and the highest weight category is identified through the program in the selected corpus. The research further points out the validation of the usage of hedges in the works of non-fictional literature.
Appendix. Database of hedges
(1) Model Hedges:
Epistemic Hedges:
afraid, appropriately, impossible, likely, may, may be, might, obvious, perhaps, possible, presumably, probable, probably, sure, surely
Deontic Hedges (shifting responsibilities to necessity and obligation):
have to, must, ought to
Dynamic Hedges (per formative ability to perform acts):
can, could, would
Evidential Hedges:
apparently, certain, certainly, clear, clearly, essentially, evident, evidently, explicitly, objectively, obviously
(2) Mental Hedges:
appear, appropriate, assume, believe, certain, doubt, feel, guess, imply, indicate, know, possible, probable, seem, suggest, suppose, suspect, tend, think
(3) Pragmatic Marker Hedges:
according to, actually, admittedly, after all, ah, almost, and, anyway, as a matter of fact, as a whole, as far as, as for me, as is well known, as long as, as most people do, as people think, as we all know, as we know, as you can see, as you know, as you many know, as you mentioned, as you mentioned just now, at least, at most, at present, basically, because, but, by the way, considering, for me, for us, frankly speaking, generally, generally speaking, hopefully, however, I am afraid, I am quite sure, I feel, I mean, I suppose, I think, if, if I am not mistaken, if time permitted, if you like, if you would not mind, in a way, in a word, in my belief, in my opinion, in other words, in part, in that case, it is likely, it was argued, just, just now, kind of, like, mentioning about, mind you, more likely, moreover, naturally, no, now, obviously, of course, oh, oh my god, ok, on average, on the base of, one may speculate, or, or exactly say, or say, personally, personally I think, really, say, seeing that, so, so far, sort of, strictly speaking, that is, that’s to say, then, therefore, this tends to mean, to be frank, to be honest, to be precise, to be true, to me, well, what has really happened, yes, you can see, you know, you see
(4) Quantificational Hedges:
Simple:
a bit of, a few, a little, a number of, about, all, almost, almost nothing, always, approximately, barely, everything, frequently, fully, generally, hardly, just, kind of, largely, many, many of the things, many things, most, most of them, much, much of the time, much time, nearly, never, none, not at all, nothing, occasionally, often, one of, partly, quite, seldom, some, some of the people, some people, somehow, sometimes, somewhat, sort of, to some extent, usually
Polar positions:
about, almost, approximate, completely, entirely, fairly good, good enough, kind of, nearly, neither very bad nor very good, not really that big, not so bad, not so important, not so much, not too bad, not too many, not very bad, not very important, quite, somehow, somewhat, sort of, tentatively, to some extent, totally, wholly
Negation with Intensifier:
if not, never ever, not really that big, not so much, not too bad, not too many, not very important, too bad, very important
(5) Tag questions, subjunctives and depersonalization:
are you, as if, as though, did you, if I were, it looks, no one can, won’t he
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