خلاصة:
The present study was conducted to examine the hedging phenomenon,an important linguistic feature which is concerned with the expression oftentativeness and possibility, in journalistic English. It specifically aimedat examining English and Persian social, economic and politicalnewspaper editorials to describe the similarities and differences in thefrequency of hedging devices in the two languages. The results revealedthat English newspaper editorials enjoyed more hedges than Persianones. Regarding topic variations, English political editorials wereslightly more hedged than the economic and social ones; whereas,Persian economic editorials were slightly more hedged than the politicaland social ones.
ملخص الجهاز:
It specifically aimedat examining English and Persian social, economic and politicalnewspaper editorials to describe the similarities and differences in thefrequency of hedging devices in the two languages.
, 1982, 1986), logic ( McCawley, 1981; Zadeh, 1972) and the nature of hedging ( Hyland, 1995, 1997, 1998; Markkanen & Schrö der, 2000; Varttala, 1999, 2001; Vassileva, 2001; Vold, 2006).
Considering the above mentioned gap, this study set out to contrastively analyze English and Persian newspaper editorials as a distinct type of discourse in terms of the frequency of hedging devices.
Table1 The distribution of length of the editorials in words by topic and language Topic Economic Social Political Total Language 5900 13719 18737 38356 English 19902 16334 19837 56073 Persian Data analysis In order to identify the hedging devices, the editorials were meticulously examined.
Finally, to see if the differences between the frequency of the occurrence of the hedging devices in the English and Persian editorials in general and across different topics in particular were statistically significant, chi-square tests were applied.
Table 2 Frequency of hedges in different text types of discourse Language Political Economic Social Total English 431 132 308 871 Persian 207 245 174 626 The Chi-Square test results indicated that the differences between the frequency of hedges in English and Persian newspapers Editorials were significant (Pearson Chi-Square value = 194.
Hedging variation by topic The frequency of occurrence of hedges, revealed that the English political editorials were slightly more hedged than the economic and social ones.