A Sociolinguistic Study On The Use Of Hedges In Spoken English

Hedges are one of the typical representatives of fuzzy language.Based on the corpus of BNC64,the present study,by using comparative analysis combined with quantitative and qualitative approach,explores the effect on the use of hedges in spoken English across five different sociolinguistic factors(gender,age,social class,region and occupation).Eight hedges(a little bit,sort of,kind of,always,nearly,quite,really and sometimes)are regarded as the research objects.The research questions include:(1)What are the overall patterns of the use of hedges in terms of frequency of occurrences and distribution in informal conversation?(2)How do such sociolinguistic factors as gender,age,social class,region and occupation influence the frequency and distribution of hedges?(3)How do such sociolinguistic factors as gender,age,social class,region and occupation influence the functional characteristics of the use of hedges?Results indicate that:(1)There are significant differences in the overall frequencies and distributions of hedges,in which really is used most frequently and followed by quite and sort of while kind of is obviously used the least.(2)Different sociolinguistic factors have different influence on the use of hedges of which women clearly use more hedges than men.In terms of age,the speakers aged 14-34 obviously use hedges more frequently than the other speaker groups.There are significant differences in the use of hedges among speakers from different social classes.The speakers from the upper middle class obviously use more hedges than the other social classes.In contrast,the frequency of hedges used by speakers from the working class is the lowest.Meanwhile,there are significant differences in the use of hedges among speakers from different regions.The speakers from Midlands use hedges with highest frequency,while the speakers from Northern England use hedges with lowest frequency.Furthermore,the speaker’s occupation is also an important factor affecting the use of hedges.The frequency of the use of hedges is the highest among the speakers who are engaged in the conventional profession,while the frequency is the lowest among the speakers who are engaged in the investigative profession.(3)In terms of the function of hedges,the characteristics of the hedges differ from various sociolinguistic factors.The results from the present study are not only helpful to enrich the research of hedges and sociolinguistics to promote the further study of language variation,but also improve the pragmatic competence of teachers and English learners.