Hedges in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

Hedging is a concept in academic writing which simply signifies the idea of being cautious in one’s words. It is achieved through the use of various linguistic expressions to show uncertainty and indirectness in style. The concept of hedging is remarkably wide and interwoven. Its boundaries run over many fields of language. That is why the devices of hedging are discussed from many angles and viewpoints in linguistics. In English, the concept and its expressions are well known. The study in hand makes a thorough survey of them. Being a popular concept in English, the researcher thought of looking for it and its linguistic tools in Arabic which is a deeply expressive language. After a detailed exploration in Standard Arabic books of grammar and linguistics, peculiarly, it has been found that the concept of hedging is not apparently mentioned and its tools are not distinguishably categorized as hedges , as in English. However, Arabic too has its own devices of expressing hedging but without being classified as hedges. The study in hand scans these hedges in Arabic as counterparts of their peers in English.