Variation Of The Hedges Kind Of,Kinda And Sort Of In Blogs

Due to the scarcity of variation analysis of hedges in blogs,especially multivariate analysis thereof,this study,grounded in the framework of variationist sociolinguistics,aims to address the constraints affecting the choice of the three hedges kind of/kinda/sort of in English blogs and further identify the strengths of the constraints.647 hedges kind/kinda/sort of were randomly selected from English blog corpus built by Schler et al.(2006).The variable rule analysis was performed via mixed-effects logistic regression modelling.The variable rule analysis reveals that the selection among the three hedges kind of/kinda/sort of is not arbitrary,but subject to probabilistic multifactorial constraints.The results show that age,modified grammatical categories and positions have a combined significant effect on the use of three hedges,respectively;and that there is no significant gender difference.Specifically,adolescents(the 10s)prefer to use kinda,and the 30 s and 40 s prefer to use kind of and sort of,whereas the 20 s do not show a clear preference for the choice of the three hedges.Although the three hedges can modify the same types of grammatical structures,kinda is more likely to modify verbal phrases and sort of is inclined to be placed before noun phrases and adjective phrases,while kind of,different from the findings of previous research,tends to modify adjective phrases and verb phrases more frequently in the present study.Besides,the study finds that kind of is more likely placed at the sentence-initial position,and the other two hedges more likely at the sentence-final position.Additionally,the study also finds that sort of has no evident preference in functional meaning,but kind of and kinda are functionally different: Kind of is more likely to convey epidemic meaning,while kinda tends to more frequently express affective meaning.On a theoretical note,the variable rule analysis of the variation of hedges in blog discourse has expanded on the research landscape of sociolinguistics to include blogs and has revealed the probabilistic property of language variation.Practically,the study enables English learners to use hedges appropriately,thus helping them improve their pragmatic competence generally.