Abstract

Hedges are linguistic devices that largely diminish the force of an utterance and soften the impact of a statement. As such, they are useful pragmatic devices that speakers use to achieve their desired communicative goals. Motivated by Lakoff's (2004) study which reveals that women are more inclined to use hedges than men, this exploratory study attempts to verify this notion by comparing the use of hedges in informal conversations between female and male ESL students in the light of Politeness Theory. The comparison is made between both genders by examining the pattern of frequency and the linguistic realizations of hedges used in the spoken discourse. To realize the objectives, a mixed method was employed in this study. Voice recordings of both single-sex and mixed-sex groups were transcribed and the hedges were analysed based on an adapted framework of categorization of hedges by Riekkinen (2009) and Svarova (2008). The findings revealed that in single-sex groups, the frequency of use of hedges used were similar for both genders. However, in a mixed-sex group, females hedged more than males. This study confirms the claim of Lakoff (2004) in which females are seen to be more sensitive to the use of hedges when compared with male speakers.