Gender differences in the use of hedges in US press briefing

Abstract

Vagueness is one of the inherent properties of language, and hedges are extensively used as a pragmatic strategy in various languages and play a role in various social contexts. Therefore, linguists have conducted extensive research on this topic and examined it in various discourse genres, including news, advertising, political addresses, and literature. From a pragmatic standpoint, this study probes gender differences in the use of hedges in White House press briefings. A total of 36 press briefings are selected to create a corpus of male press secretaries (MPSC) and a corpus of female press secretaries (FPSC). Then, Antconc, Excel, SPSSAU, and other tools are utilized to conduct searches and count to determine the gender differences in press secretaries' use of hedges. Finally, Brown & Levinson's Face Theory (1987) and Leech's Politeness Principle Theory (1983) are used to analyse the pragmatic functions of hedges in press briefings. This study's primary findings are as follows: (1) Female press secretaries use hedges more frequently and in greater quantity than males. (2) There is no significant difference in the frequency with which male and female spokespersons use hedges as approximators; however, there is a significant difference in the use of shields. (3) Hedges in press briefings demonstrate the speaker's politeness to the listeners and protect the listener's face, but they also serve as a means of self-defense for the speaker, protecting the speaker's face.