Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of English Language, College of Education, Garmian University, Kurdistan Region - Iraq

Abstract

Academics contend that hedges are an appropriate use of ambiguity in situations where precision may not be required. In this research, the use of hedging in three chosen plays is examined and the authors' use of hedges—both the types and the frequency—are studied. It is the fact that it stands for the primary elements of everyday communication. The study's hypothesis is that hedging occurs often in contemporary plays and that hedging methods have certain pragmatic purposes. The data are manually coded using Hyland's (1998) and Yu's (2009) taxonomy of hedges. Application of quantitative research techniques to data demonstrated that hedging expressions, including modal auxiliary, approximator, epistemic verbs, etc., can serve this purpose depending on the speaker's intent. Context dictates how a hedge should be interpreted.

Keywords