A Corpus-based Gender Study of Hedges in Spoken British English

A Corpus-based Gender Study of Hedges in Spoken British English Ruofan Du Shanghai International Studies University / 1550 Wenxiang Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai 915106032@qq.com Abstract The use of hedges plays an important role in daily language use. Based on the spoken texts of British National Corpus (BNC), the study attempts to explore the similarities and differences of hedges employed by the British males and females in their talks. A comparison was made in the frequency and distribution of hedges between the males and females. Meanwhile, the frequency and distribution of hedges were put under investigation to see how the hedges vary with the speakers’ social classes. The statistics observed demonstrate that generally females use hedges more frequently than males, and the higher the speakers’ social classes are, the more preference they will have to use hedges. But when the 4 types of hedges are respectively studied, it is found that different genders or speakers from different social classes have different preferences in using hedges. Thus, from the study, it is known that instead of being typical female language or typical language of speakers from higher social classes, hedges have been widely used. It is because that with multiple functions, hedges are beneficial for speakers to facilitating interpersonal interaction. The study presents useful reference for the more comprehensive and systematic studies in the future. 1 Introduction Gender and language have always been one of the most important concerns of linguists. Danish linguist Jespersen first analyzed the characteristics of women’s use of language from the perspective of linguistics in Language: It’s Nature, Development and Origin, which was published in 1922. It was not until the 1960s that the feminist movement in the West further promoted the linguists’ in-depth study of gender and language. Among them, Robin Lakoff is one of the most influential representatives. In the book Language and Women’s Place (1975), she summarized several main features of women’s language, which is implicit, euphemistic, tends to cooperate, etc., and pointed out that the reason why women’s language is different from men’s language is determined by their different social status. Holmes (1995), a New Zealand scholar, combined Brown and Levinson’s (1978) politeness theory to analyze the use of English among New Zealand white people. The results showed that women are more polite than men, and women use more positive politeness strategies in communication. Linguists have discussed the differences of gender language from different perspectives, which makes it a research hotspot. In addition, the use of hedges makes the expression of language more objective and polite, and plays an important role in daily communication. Thus, hedges have also attracted interests of researchers. Based on the spoken texts of BNC (British National Corpus), the study will investigate the use of hedges, systematically analyze the frequency and distribution of hedges in the corpus, and summarize the similarities and differences between men and women in the use of hedges. 2 Literature Review 2.1 The definition of hedges The term “hedges” first appeared in Lakoff’s paper Hedges: A …

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