Tài liệu Hedging devices used in english speeches by president joseph biden on the covid 19

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY PHAN THỊ CẨM TÚ HEDGING DEVICES USED IN ENGLISH SPEECHES BY PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN ON THE COVID-19 Field: English Linguistics Code: 8 22 02 01 Supervisor: Bùi Thị Đào, Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN PHAN THỊ CẨM TÚ CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN RÀO ĐÓN TRONG CÁC BÀI PHÁT BIỂU TIẾNG ANH CỦA TỔNG THỐNG JOSEPH BIDEN VỀ COVID 19 Chuyên ngành : Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8 22 02 01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. Bùi Thị Đào i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that I am the sole author of the MA thesis entitled ―Hedging devices used in English speeches by President Joseph Biden on the Covid -19‖. The thesis contains no material published elsewhere or written by other people except where reference is made in the text of the thesis. Moreover, this research has not been submitted for any other degree or diploma at any university. Quy Nhon, 2022 PHAN THỊ CẨM TÚ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this study is the result of not only my efforts but also other assistance of individuals to whom I would like to express my special gratitude. Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Bùi Thị Đào, who has supported me with her endless patience, thoughtful guidance and comprehensive advice during the whole period of the study. Without her instructions, this thesis would have been impossible to be completed. Secondly, I am also thankful to all the lecturers of the courses for their valuable lectures and experiences, which provide essential knowledge for this thesis. Thirdly, my gratitude is devoted to my colleagues and close friends for their kind support and warm encouragement, without which I could not have overcome all the trouble during the fulfilment of this study. Finally, I owe my whole family a debt of gratitude, especially my parents, who always stand by me and provide me with emotional support and great care while my thesis was in process and have helped me overcome many unexpected difficulties during the course and the thesis. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. iii ABSTRACT Based on Salager-Meyer‘s classification framework, the present study aimed to investigate the linguistic devices which act as hedges used in 10 speeches made by President Joseph Biden on COVID-19. The main purpose of the study is to explore kinds of hedging devices in speeches to find out the most dominant type of hedging devices and the frequencies of the hedging devices are identified in the speeches of the President Joseph Biden experience the world in COVID-19. The study is a combination of qualitative, quantitative, descriptive, analytic, and synthetic method. The results indicate that modal auxiliaries verbs, which is the most frequently used hedging device in President Joseph Biden‘s speeches and the most frequently used hedging device subcategory is the modal auxiliary ―will‖. The findings of the study could serve as data for further understanding. To learners, this kind of hedging devices is proved to be one of the effective instruments for improving their English skills in general and in communication in particular. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................. iv ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS .................................................. vi LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURE .......................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1 1.1 RATIONALE .......................................................................................... 1 1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVE...................................................................... 4 1.2.1. Aims ................................................................................................ 4 1.2.2. Objective ......................................................................................... 4 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................... 4 1.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY....................................................... 5 1.5. SCOPE OF THE STUDY ...................................................................... 5 1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY .................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................... 7 2.1. AN OVERVIEW OF HEDGES AND PREVIOUS STUDIES ............. 7 2.2. DEFINITIONS OF HEDGES .............................................................. 12 2.3. TYPES OF HEDGES........................................................................... 15 2.3.1. Modal auxiliary verbs ................................................................... 20 2.3.2. Modal lexical verbs ....................................................................... 21 2.3.3. Adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases ........................ 22 2.3.4. Approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time .............. 25 2.3.5. Introductory phrases ...................................................................... 26 v 2.3.6. If clauses........................................................................................ 28 2.3.7. Compound hedges ......................................................................... 29 2.4. SUMMARY ......................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY ............................................................... 32 3.1. RESEARCH METHODS .................................................................... 32 3.2 DESCRIPTION OF DATA .................................................................. 32 3.3. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES ............................................. 33 3.4. DATA ANALYSIS .............................................................................. 33 3.5. VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY ....................................................... 35 3.6. SUMMARY ......................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ......................................... 37 4.1. AN OVERVIEW HEDGING DEVICES TYPES EXPLORED FROM THE DATA.................................................................................................. 37 4.1.1. Modal auxiliary verbs ................................................................... 39 4.1.2 Modal lexical verbs ........................................................................ 42 4.1.3 Adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases ......................... 44 4.1.4 Approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time ............... 47 4.1.5. Introductory phrases ...................................................................... 50 4.1.6. If clauses........................................................................................ 53 4.2. SUMMARY ......................................................................................... 54 CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS.......................... 55 5.1 REVIEW OF FINDINGS IN THE STUDY ......................................... 55 5.2. IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................. 56 5.3. LIMITATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES ...................................... 58 5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES ...................................... 59 REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 61 APPENDIXES vi ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS (a) Abbreviations Adj.: Adjective Adv.: Adverbs HD: Hedging devices AFT.: Approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time (b) Conventions - Boldface is used to mark the first use of technical terms. - Italics are used for examples, emphasis, and technical terms. vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 The categories and some examples of hedging words.................... 19 Table 4. 1. Distribution of Hedging types ....................................................... 37 Table 4. 2. Frequency and percentages of modal auxiliaries .......................... 39 Table 4. 3. Frequency and percentages of modal lexical verbs ...................... 42 Table 4. 4. Frequency and percentages of adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases ................................................................................ 44 Table 4.5. Frequency and percentage of approximators concerning degree, quantity, frequency and time ......................................................... 47 Table 4.6. Frequency and percentages of introductory phrases ...................... 50 Table 4.7. Frequency and percentages of if clauses....................................... 53 viii LIST OF FIGURE Figure. 2.1. Set model for modal verbs, auxiliary verbs and verbs ................ 21 Figure. 4. 1. Distribution of Hedging types .................................................... 38 Figure. 4. 2. Frequency and percentages of modal auxiliaries ....................... 40 Figure. 4. 3. Frequency and percentages of modal lexical verbs .................... 43 Figure. 4. 4. Frequency and percentages of adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases ................................................................................ 45 Figure. 4.5. Frequency and percentage of approximators concerning degree, quantity, frequency and time ......................................................... 48 Figure. 4.6. Frequency and percentages of introductory phrases ................... 51 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE It has been widely accepted that communication plays an important role in daily life conversation. In order to be a successful communicator, a speaker must be aware of not only what to say but also how to say it appropriately. Thus, in a conversation, besides informative content of an utterance, speakers often use devices to attenuate or reinforce the utterances of the speech act. One of the devices is hedges which are expressed to avoid misunderstanding or negative reaction to speaker‘s speech and contribute to the flexibility and continuation for a conversation as well as achieve communicative purposes. Human often face with many real-life difficult situations that they cannot express straightly what they are thinking clearly. In those situations, it is very necessary for the speakers to have tactful communicative skills and strategies. It is the issue of effective communication that deal with for creating and using of hedges. Channel (1994: 3) states that ―one of the most useful and enduring insights to come out of the recent study of language use is that speakers and writers tailor their language to make it suitable to the situation (when, where and why?)‖ and ―the linguistic context (is it gossipy chat, an interview, a story in a popular newspaper?.)‖. Lakoff (1972: 90) explains that ―in order to show their femininity, women tend to adopt an unassertive style of communication. That is, they must learn to denude their statements of declarative force.‖ He also further describes that ―women‘s speech lacks 2 authority.‖ His studies devoted to the domain has demonstrated and, roughly speaking, agreed upon the validity of hedging devices in strengthening the statements by weakening the claims. Sandell (1977: 5) explains that in order to achieve the same effect with different speakers, i.e. to make them react in a uniform manner, the skilled sender changes his wording with each different utterances so as to conform to their different frames of meanings. Still, his conception of the topic of the message is as unchanging as the effect he desires on one part of the hearers. Nevertheless, this does not imply that these different wordings would have the same effect on a single individual, which makes it important to distinguish between inter individual and intra individual identity (or similarity) of meanings, and to research if one and the same nominal meanings, differently styled in a message, will carry out intra individually different meanings, particularly regarding those aspects in which we call persuasive effects. By reasons of similarity and utterance, it is possle to purport that indetermination, indirectness, vagueness are different strategies or means of the same phenomenon hedging. To a certain extent, all these means do share certain pragmatic functions. In recent years, together with the increasing infectious diseases on covid19, great efforts of presidents in Vietnam and elsewhere have been made in order to prevent and cure. The information on covid-19 in presidents‘ speeches is constantly updated with various hedging devices to help people avoid spreading diseases. Hedging is considered as not only one mechanism whose main meaning is related to the tone, attitude, and information within speeches, but a communicative strategy in form of pragmatic competence which plays a central role in delivering the intended message of the speaker as well. (Getkham, 2011). Getkham further stated that hedging devices are one of the important requirements 3 which help speakers to maintain objectivity in their language production. One way through which this requirement can be realized is utilizing hedges. Hedging in speeches from pragmatic perspective is still an area available for more exploration. This study, the author adopts the viewpoint of Palmer (2003: 331) that hedge devices are words and phrases that ―certain prosodic and paralinguistic features, having the effect of damping down the force of what is said, and are valuable resources for speakers;‖ and Brown & Levinson (1987: 145) that hedge devices are ―particles, words or phrases that modify the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial or true only in certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected.‖ Moreover, Salager-Meyer (1994:150) defined that hedges are associated with ―purposive vagueness and tentativeness.‖ The meanings of hedge verbs are to reduce the risk of negation. Hedges have been given different classifications by different researchers (Crompton, 1997; Hyland, 1996, 1998; Myer, 1989; Salager-Meyer, 1994). One of the most important ones is that of Hyland (1996). Hyland (1996: 430) suggested three types of hedging: ―content-oriented‖ hedges, ―reader-oriented‖ hedges and ―writeroriented‖ hedges. ―Content-oriented‖ hedges are further subdivided into ―accuracy-oriented‖ and ―writer-oriented‖ hedges. Accuracy-oriented hedges are utilized to ―qualify the accuracy of a part of the proposition, while writeroriented hedges are used to ―reduce the commitment of the speaker to the proposition in order to protect against the threat of negation‖. On the other hand, a ―reader-oriented‖ hedges is ―an acknowledgement of the reader‘s right to make judgments and to engage in a dialogue.‖ Besides, hedging is considered as an integral and important tool in 4 writing discourse. Less attention has been made on hedging in different disciplines or genres in speeches. All the above reasons, an insightful investigation into “Hedging Devices used in English Speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19” has chosen as a potential subject to help people master pragmatic features of hedging devices used in speeches so that they can achieve a sufficient foundation of knowledge to make their speeches successful and persuasive, avoid misunderstanding. 1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVE 1.2.1. Aims This study aims to investigate hedging devices through analyzing speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19. 1.2.2. Objective This study is intended to fulfill the following objectives: - To identify and classify hedging devices used in speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19 - To explore the frequencies of the hedging devices used in those speeches 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS To achieve the aims and objectives of the study, the following research questions are raised: 1. What are types of hedging devices used in speeches of President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19? 2. What are the frequencies of the hedging devices identified in those speeches? 5 1.4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The outcome of this study is expected to bring an insight into the use of hedging devices in English speeches by President Joe Biden. Also, the analysis of types of the hedging devices in those speeches is hoped to bring some pedagogical implications to the teaching and learning of English. The learners are expected to earn the benefits from the results of analysis to have a sufficient knowledge and understanding about hedges so that they can identify hedges in each study. 1.5. SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study is focused on the analysis of common hedging devices in ten speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19. This study also tries to find out the frequency of occurrences of these hedging devices in speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19. In the study, the data is analyzed based on the research of Salager-Meyer (1994) and theoretical framework indicated by Brown & Levinson (1987). Ten speeches by President Joseph Biden on the COVID-19 from the official websites consisting of https://www.c-span.org/video and https://www.whitehouse.gov are used as the main source of the research. 1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY The study consists of five chapters as follows: Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter shows an overview of the thesis including the rationales, aims, objectives, research questions, the scope of the study, significance of the study and the organization of the study. Chapter 2: Literature Review and theoretical background 6 This chapter reviews previous studies, the definition, viewpoints and types of hedging devices described in details. Chapter 3: Methods and Procedures This chapter discusses the methods of research and research procedures. In addition, data collection, data analysis and research procedures are also presented. Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion This chapter discusses the results of the study from the collected data based on the two research questions mentioned above. The statistic of occurrence frequency, the category and the functions of the hedging devices in the speeches and remarks of President Biden are provided. Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications This chapter summarizes the main findings of the research, present the limitations of the study, give implications and put forward some suggestions for further research. 7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews previous studies and provides some theoretical concepts related to the problem under investigation. It attempts to explore the notion of hedging devices, types of hedging devices and meanings of hedging devices. 2.1. AN OVERVIEW OF HEDGES AND PREVIOUS STUDIES Lakoff (1972) set the foundation in the field of hedges with his article Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts. Lakoff was interested in the linguistic phenomena used to talk about the more peripheral members of broad concept categories. To illustrate the practical possibility of studying such linguistic terms in terms of logical properties and to address the questions involved in such analyses, Lakoff carefully studied a group of words and phrases like rather, largely, in a manner of speaking, very that he regarded as hedges in ―making things fuzzier or less fuzzy‖ (1972: 213). Lakoff (2008) develops hedges including vocabulary, voice, tone, style, and syntactic structure. Lakoff further explained that the linguistic feature often used is hedges like you know, I mean, well, and used to express a ―lack of confidence or show any expression of uncertainty or tentative sentences‖. Later, many other linguists followed Lakoff‘s theory and further studied them in many other works including Brown & Levinson (1987), Hyland (1996, 1998), Myers (1989), Nash (1990), Salager-Meyer (1994), and so on. Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) study hedges as devices to avoid disagreement. They use hedges as a strategy or an expression of negative politeness in face-saving. Halliday and Hasan (1985) state hedges as 8 modifiers of the speaker‘s or writer‘s commitment to the truth-value of a whole proposition, not just the category membership of a part of it. Halliday and Hasan, Kopple (1985) considers the use of hedges as showing a lack of full commitment to the propositional content of an utterance such as perhaps, seem, might, to a definite extent as modifying the truth-value of the whole proposition, not as making individual elements inside it more imprecise. Salager-Meyer (1997) considers hedges as several different grammatical forms, namely Auxiliary Verbs Model, Modal lexical verbs, Adjectival, adverbial, and nominal modal phrase, Approximator, Introductory phrases, If-clauses, and Compound hedges. The ways of expressing hedging are researched to convey opinions of the writers or speakers to negotiate an accurate representation of the knowledge under discussion. Furthermore, hedging devices draw much attention from researchers. Many doctoral dissertations, master theses and journals investigate hedging devices in various aspects. Gribanova & Gaidukova (2019) studied hedges in their journal with the title ―Hedging in different types of discourse.‖ The article explores discourse features of some of the most common hedges observed in modern English and apply Prince et al.‘s (1982) classification of hedges into approximators (modify the propositional content conveyed in the utterance) and shields (modify the truth value of the utterance) to analyse hedging behaviour in two discourse genres. Azizah (2021) researched the articles named ―Hedges Function in Masculine and Feminine Feature‘s Language.‖ The aim of the article is to explore the gender language features proposed by Coates (2013) proposed in Lakoff's theory (1975) by investigating language features based on gender and use the taxonomy of the hedging strategy. The results of the study show that male-female language features can be expressed by the opposite gender by the use of hedges and strategies. 9 In Viet Nam, hedges devices are studied in a doctoral dissertation entitled ―hedging devices in English and Vietnamese economic research articles (ERAs)‖ by Phạm Thi Thanh Thuy (2008). The research was carried out on the feature in the written discourse of economics with a systematic analysis including linguistic forms and a pragmatic explanation for their use was given. The main purposes of the thesis are to characterize the common extent, functions and major forms of hedging in one particular genre: economic research articles. Her thesis was conducted based on an analysis of authentic written articles to give the concept within academic strategies for modifying illocutionary force. The research not only described the distribution of surface forms used in hedge in English and Vietnamese research articles but also identified the framework underlying rhetorical choices. The findings provided teachers of English for Specific Purposes in general and of economics in particular better understandings of hedging. Therefore, they can assist their students in understanding economic texts as well as writing texts and commitments to the notion of language use were emphasized. Ngo Thi Minh Trang (2012) researched hedging devices entitled ―Conditional clauses used as hedging devices in English and Vietnamese equivalents: A pragmatic perspective‖. Her research have been conducted to study English conditional in light of syntactics, semantics, and pragmatic functions, especially in Vietnamese context. Therefore, her study was done to offer the detailed analysis of conditionals in light of pragmatics. The chosen data was taken from a well-known novel. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were applied in her research. The findings showed that conditional clauses are used in English to refer real and hypothetical conditions as well as their consequences. In addition, they are also used in spoken contexts where the if-clause often stands alone and is independent of 10 the main clause as a hedging device to issue politeness. The study contributed to the area of pragmatic studies on analyzing conditionals used in language basing on the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Theory. The finding broadened the understanding of pragmatic functions of conditional in real communication. The study also provided the educators and their students with the clear explanations of pseudoconditionals such as ―If you like… If I may interrupt…‖. Above all, the study offered learners a couple of ways to express politeness in communication thanks to the use of pseudo conditionals. These ways were expected to be helpful for those who are interested in translating English conditionals into Vietnamese ones and vice versa. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen (2012) investigated the linguistic devices of hedges and major pragmatic functions of identified hedges in conversations in the novel of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The study was carried out based on taxonomy of hedging devices by Yu (2009) and poly pragmatic paradigm of hedges by Hyland (1998). The study revealed that four main hedging categories were used in the conversations in the novel, namely, modal hedges, performative hedges, quantificational hedges and pragmaticmarker hedges. Besides, there are also other minor types of tag questions, subjunctives and depersonalization. The findings showed that three main functions that identified hedging devices fulfill are speaker-orientation, accuracy-orientation and hearer-orientation. Do Thi Kim Cuc (2013) researched hedging devices named ―A study of the linguistic features of hedging devices in lectures in English‖ based on the theory of speech act classification by Yule and the Cooperative Principles by Grice. In her study, hedging devices are frequently used on the side of teachers to get their communicative purpose. For instance, the teacher often