APPLICATION OF HEDGES BY AUTHORS PROVIDES OPPORTUNITY FOR PROPER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW WORDS ARE USED TO ACHIEVE DIFFERENT EFFECT IN COMMUNICATION PROCESSES

Abstract

Application of hedges by authors provides opportunity for proper understanding of how words are used to achieve different effect in communication processes. To this effect hedges have very wide universal application. The word hedge is a subfield of pragmatics that enables authors to convey ideas, concepts, feelings and observations to readers and allow them to make some deductions. It is in this regard that this study tries to examine hedges as politeness strategies in Flora Nwapa’sEfuru, One is Enough and BuchiEmecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood and Second Class Citizen. In order to achieve this, descriptive and qualitative research designs were adopted. The descriptive research design allowed the researcher to observe anything related to the object of the research without having a right to control. On the other hand, as a qualitative research, the data used for the research were non-numerical. Following this, four novels written by two seasoned Nigerian authors were selected for the study. Similarly five research questions were designed for the study. In the same manner, related literature were reviewed under the following subheadings-conceptual review, theoretical review, empirical review and the summary of the literature of the review. As a method of generating the data for the research, the four novels were read and words used as hedges to portray politeness strategies were identified and analysed. Also, the hedges identified as politeness strategies were used to answer the five research questions. At the end, the following were identified as findings:- that there were words that can be used as hedges to portray politeness strategies to maintain a better communication environment and that authors can use hedges as politeness strategies for saving face and to achieve the purpose of self-protection. The following were the recommendations:- authors should endeavour to use different types of hedges in order to produce different conversational effects and intentions in different contexts; writers should pay more attention to linguistic environment to be able to accommodate more hedges in their works and ensure a better communication environment.