Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.

2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

HEDGING AND LANGUAGE STYLE IN POLITICAL

DISCOURSE: OBAMA AND GILLARD STYLE

Muhammad Shohibussirri
( Lecturer of English Letters Department Faculty of Letters and
Humanities Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta )

Abstract
Hedging is an important feature of language style. By using
hedges, politicians can give information to media less than what
they actually look for. They can also evade from their responsibility
by saying one thing with hedge, but they mean the other. Using
Fraser’s taxonomy of hedging devices and Wierzbicka’s Natural
Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), this paper examines the use of
hedging devices in three press conferences of Barack Obama
(2013) and three of Julia Gillard (2010-2012). The paper also
looks into detail the politically oriented use of epistemic, an
important lexical item of Anglo culture (Wierzbicka, 2006). The
findings show that hedging devices become the dominant feature of
Gillard speech, and not Obama. In addition, Obama also uses
epistemic and non-epistemic with almost equal proportion while
Gillard has dominant usage in non-epistemic. Thus, it can be said
that the language style of male and female politicians may be
different from one to another, as Obama and Gillard show it.
Keywords: language style, hedging devices, epistemic, anglo
culture, natural semantic metalanguage (NSM), and political
discourse.

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Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

Abstrac
Hedging merupakan salah satu fitur penting dalam stilistika wacana
politik. Dengan menggunakan hedges, politikus bisa memberikan
informasi dengan presisi rendah yang diminta oleh media massa
saat diwawancarai. Politikus juga bisa menghindar dari tanggung
jawab memberi informasi yang benar dengan menyengaja meng-
gunakan hedges dalam satu pernyataan tapi yang dimaksudkan
olehnya bermakna ambigu. Dengan menggunakan Taksonomi
hedging devices dari Fraser dan Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Wierzbicka, tulisan ini menganalisis Obama dan Gillard dalam
konferensi pers yang mereka lakukan di wilayah politik mereka
masing-masing, Amerika Serikat dan Australia.
Kata kunci: gaya bahasa, hedge, epistemic, kultur Anglo-Saxon,
semantik metabahasa, dan wacana politik.

A. Introduction Hedging is an im-

portant feature of language
Style is an important
related to style (Koutsantoni
feature of speech because it
2007). By using hedges, po-
does not only show how
liticians can give information
capable a speaker is but it
to media less than what they
also shows speaker‟s identity.
Every person has distinctive actually look for (Majeed
2010). They can also evade
style in using language,
from their responsibility by
mainly in speaking and
saying one thing with hedge,
writing. When this style is
but they mean the other
connected to politics, it is
(Hinkel 2002). Politicians
even more important. Each
usually use this feature of
politician has their own style
language when talking about
in speaking to public and
sensitive issues. Politicians‟
media. Their style may im-
use of hedge may cause
press and may result in them
misunderstanding because it
gain support from people, but
not easy to comprehend what
it also may lead to public
they actually mean by their
criticism and censure.

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Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
statement. Hence, hedge is a
strategic feature by which
politicians‟ style of language
and ideological view on
certain issue meet.
This study will exa-
mine the use of hedging
devices in three press con-
ferences of Barack Obama
and three of Julia Gillard.
This study will also look into
detail the politically oriented
use of epistemic, an important
lexical item of Anglo culture
(Wierzbicka 2006). These
press conferences will be
studied using Fraser‟s taxo-
nomy of hedging devices and
Wierzbicka‟s Natural Seman-
tic Metalanguage (NSM).
B. Literature Review
The term „hedge‟ is
used for the first time by
Lakoff (1972), although
Weinrich had studied similar
linguistic concept (1965). La-
koff defines hedge as “words
whose job is to make things
fuzzier or less fuzzy” (p.
234). Several years later,
Zuck and Zuck (1986: 172)
move forward by defining
hedges as “the process whe-
reby the author reduces the
strength of what he is wri-
ting”. For them, hedge in-
273
volves a process, called
hedging, which goes beyond
words. Brown & Levinson
adapted this concept and used
it in pragmatics (1987). Here,
hedging is considered as a
strategy to show negative
politeness. However, Mark-
kanen and Schr der ( 989
argued that hedge is „nega-
tive‟ tool that allow speakers
to be manipulative in giving
response to others.
The definition of
hedge on political discourse
is more specific. Hyland
(1998: 5) defines hedges as
“the means by which writers
can present a proposition as
an opinion rather than a fact”.
In addition, Fraser (2010:201)
defines it “hedging is a
rhetorical strategy….by inclu-
ding a particular term, choo-
sing a particular structure, or
imposing a specific prosodic
form on the utterance”. Fraser
states further that in political
discourse, this hedging is
used for one of the two rea-
sons. It is either “to mitigate
an undesirable effect on the
hearer, thereby ren-dering the
message (more polite” or “to
avoid providing the informa-
tion which is expected or
required in the speaker‟s con-
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
tribution, thereby creating
vagueness and/ or evasion”
(Fraser, 2010: 206).
Different definitions
result in different linguistic
devices to hedge. Lakoff
(1972) for example lists about
70 words. They are words
like „sort of‟, „kind of‟ and
„loosely speaking‟. Fraser
(2010) also has different for-
mulation of hedging devices.
According to him, because
hedge is not a grammatical
category, it could be a word,
a phrase, and an entire sen-
tence. He mentions a very
complex list of Illocutionary
force hedge that includes
indirect speech acts, intro-
ductory phrases, modal ad-
verbs, modal adjectives, mo-
dal noun, modal verb, epis-
temic verbs, negation, rever-
sal tag, parenthetic construc-
tion and if clause.
There are two inte-
resting features in Fraser‟s
taxonomy. The first is called
propositional hedge that is
very similar to the word list
proposed by Lakoff. It is for
example „about‟, „actually‟,
„almost‟, „approximately‟, „as
it were‟, „basically‟, „can be
viewed as‟, „crypto-„, „es-
274
pecially‟, „essentially‟, „ex-
ceptionally‟, „for the most
part‟, and „generally‟. The
second is the compound
hedging that indicates the
possibility of employing dou-
ble and even treble hedges
simultaneously. The most
complex example is like “It
would seem somewhat un-
likely that it may appear
somewhat speculative that”
(p. 205) with four hedges
being used.
Epistemic is an inte-
gral part of Anglo culture
(Wierzbicka 2006). It is
important to know how this
epistemic is used in Anglo
politics. Epistemic as one of
linguistic devices to hedge is
only by verb according to
Fraser‟s taxonomy (20 0 .
Heng and Tan‟s hedging de-
vices also only consider verb
as epistemic (2002). Clemen
(1997) proposed similar idea
but called it epistemic qua-
lifiers. However, there is
another kind of epistemic,
namely adverb and adjective.
Perez-Llatanda mentioned
two epistemic words, verb
and adverb (2009). Hyland
(1996) stated that verb, ad-
verb and adjective are epis-
temic to hedge. Further,
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
Wierzbicka explained two
different kinds of epistemic,
phrasal and adverb (2006:
204-291). Phrasal epistemic
is what Fraser classifies as
verb. It is phrasal because
according to Wierzbicka,
verb is epistemic only when
used with the pronoun „I‟. If
used with other pronoun, the
meaning could be different
(2006).
C. Methodology
In this study, the data
are collected from six press
conferences, three of Obama
(2013) and three of Gillard
(2010 & 2012). The transcript
of three Obama‟s conferences
are taken from the Washing-
ton Post website. Three
transcripts of Gillard‟s con-
ferences are obtained from
various sources, namely the
website of the Australian, of
the South Asia Times and of
an Australian online news
portal, (www.news.com.au).
These press conferences were
held when they were poli-
tically powerful. At that time,
Obama was the President of
the USA and Gillard was the
Prime Minister of Australia.
Furthermore, the data are
275
only collected from Obama
and Gillard‟s answers to
journalist questions. Their
other statements that are not
directly relevant to such
questions will be ignored and
will not be analyzed.
Fraser‟s classification
of hedging devices will be
employed along with
Wierzbicka‟s NSM. Fraser‟s
method is the most recent and
the more elaborative com-
pared to others. This has also
been applied to Bush spee-
ches in 2007 (Fraser 2010).
NSM is very suitable to be
applied in such political dis-
course to understand Obama
and Gillard meaning in a
neutral way. Other reason is
that any monolingual dictio-
nary cannot define epistemic
phrasal and adverbs as NSM
does.
There are two impor-
tant things in terms of the
study methodology. First, la-
nguage style will be based on
their use of hedging devices
and non-hedging devices. The
hedging devices used will be
looked in details by cate-
gorizing it as epistemic and
nonepistemic to check what
hedging device is dominant in
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
political discourse. In this
study, epistemic refers only to
verb if used with „I‟ and
adverb (Wierzbicka 2006).
Second, hedging in this study
indicates one of these three
meaning: (a) mitigate the
effect to hearer (b) give
information less than what
required or expected by
hearer and hence it gives less
clarity (c) shows lack of
precise information from
speaker (Fraser 2010). Any
forms of language that
structurally looks like hedges
are not counted when
indicating different meaning
than these three.
Practically, there are
two steps of analysis. The
first, the writer will check
their use of hedges (epistemic
and non-epistemic) and non-
hedges. The frequency of use
will be calculated and put in a
table. It is through this step
that language style of Obama
and Gillard can be described
and compared. The second,
some of their selected an-
swers that contain epistemic
will be carefully explicated
using NSM to comprehend its
meaning.
276
D. Results
1. Obama’s style of language
Obama as the presi-
dent of super power country,
a figure who literally has the
highest level of power among
Americans, often uses li-
nguistic devices to hedge
when answering journalist‟s
questions in press conferen-
ces, 45% (18). Furthermore,
he also answers such ques-
tions by providing relevant
information. A percentage of
35% (14) refers to this. The
rest of Obama‟s style is by
not answering questions
given, 20% (8). This non-
responsive style is often not
recognized by the media who
attend the conference because
Obama‟s rhetoric and enga-
ging speech. Here, Obama‟s
styles are dominated by hed-
ging, followed by giving
information as required by
journalist and by not res-
ponding to their questions.
Table 1 demonstrates this re-
sult.
Table 1
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

if looked closely, Obama‟s

nguistic
Devices
style of language is domina-

Freq.
Type
Li-
No

%
ted by the use of epistemic,
having 38.9%. Non-epistemic
gets second spot while the
1 Hedges Verb 6 15
combination of epistemic and
2 Ad- 1 2.5 non-epistemic sits at the
verb
bottom, 33.3% and 27.8%
3 Mo- 1 2.5 respectively. Table 2 demon-
dal strates this result.
4 Sen- 1 2.5
tence Table 2
5 Con- 1 2.5
ditio-

Type of
hedges

Freq.
No

nal

%
con-
struc-
tion
1. Epistemic 7 38.9
6 Dou- 8 20 verb and
ble adverb
hed-
ges 2. Non- 6 33.3
epistemic
7 Non- 14 35 hedges
hedges
3. Combination 5 27.8
8 No 8 20 of epistemic
answer and non
epistemic
40 100
hedges
From this table, it also can be
understood that the most Interestingly, Obama
frequent linguistic devices only employs four epistemic
used by Obama to hedge is words in such conferences,
double hedges, having 20%. „think‟, „believe‟, „probably‟,
It is then followed by verb by and „presumably‟. The rest of
15%. The rests devices, epistemic proposed by
namely adverb, verb, modal, Wierzbicka are not used at
sentence and conditional all. From these four, the most
construction share the same used epistemic by Obama is
portion, only 2.5%. Besides, the verb, „think‟, having

277
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

66.7%. Table 3 demonstrates about congress authorization

this result. on military action and the
possible strikes in one of the
Table 3 conferences. At the first
occasion, Obama intentional-
Epistemic

ly did not respond by ex-

Freq.
No

plaining another question

%
very lengthily. The journalist
asked the same question in
1 Verb Think 8 66.7 the next second and third
. occasion. Obama replied
Believe 2 16.7 lightly for this, „I was gonna
2 Ad- Probabl 1 8.3
give you a different answer‟.
verb y Feeling that the reply was
irrelevant, the journalist
3 Verb Think 1 8.3
& ad- & pre- asked the same questions at
verb su- the end of press conference.
mably But, the journalist did not get
information that he wanted
Principally, Obama‟s because Obama preferred not
style of language based on to explain. Obama knew that
these data can be generalized certain political information
into three characteristics: (a). needs not to be given to
In terms of frequency, the use public and „not responding‟ is
of hedge and non-hedge as a good strategy. Moreover,
speech styles are only slightly Obama also did not give
different (b). Epistemic and answer on other sensitive
non-epistemic are almost issues such as the drone
equally used to hedge and (c). strikes in Yemen, NSA
„Think‟ is the most frequent surveillance effect, „against
epistemic when Obama pre- his own constituent‟ in doing
fers to hedge. military action and law of
justice implementation in
The no-answer style is Afghanistan and some Middle
also his rhetorical strategy East countries by the USA.
and it is used when he was
asked about sensitive political
issues. Obama was asked

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Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

2. Gillard’s style of language Table 4

The thing in common

Linguistic
between Obama and Gillard

devices

Freq.
Type
No

%
is that they are politically
powerful when responding
questions in the press con-
ferences. Because power can 1 Hedges Verb 11 19.0
displayed in various ways, 2 Sen- 9 15.5
including in utterances and tence
political expressions, press 3 Modal 8 13.8
conferences are medium for
4 Passive 1 1.7
them to show power in the
form of statement. They can 5 Condi- 1 1.7
avoid answering questions; tional
they can give what is not 6 Double 8 13.8
required and even ask to hedges
change questions. 7 Non- 19 32.8
hedges
By using hedge and
8 No 1 1.7
non hedge as parameter, Gil- answer
lard seems to frequently give
information to journalist less Total 58 100
than what she asked about.
From this table, only
Dominant feature of her
seven types of hedges are
speech is by employing hedge
used. Verb, modal, sentence
in press conferences. This
and double hedges are the
strategy has 65.5% (38), a big
dominant devices used by
portion compared to other
Gillard when hedging politi-
styles. The least used style of
cal statements. Out of this
her is by not giving answer to
seven, her favorite linguistic
what is asked, having only
devices are non-epistemic
1.7% (1). Between these two,
hedges in various forms,
answering questions directly
having 65.8%. Epistemic
by employing no hedges has
devices are rarely employed
middle portion, 32.8% (19).
by Gillard, followed by com-
Table 4 demonstrates this
bination of epistemic and
result.
non-epistemic, having 21%

279
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
and 13.2% respectively.
Table 5 demonstrates this
result.
Table 5
Freq.
No
Type of hedges
1. Epistemic verb 8 21.0
and adverb
2. Non-epistemic 25
hedges
3. Combination of 5 13.2
epistemic and non
epistemic hedges
Even though episte-
mic is less employed in her
political statements, it still
becomes an important feature
of her linguistic style. Con-
sidering that the third feature,
the combination, as part of
epistemic strategy for exam-
ple will make this feature the
half of non-epistemic devices
usage. Apart from these de-
tails, Gillard is very seldom
to use epistemic adverb. Her
dominant feature of epistemic
is „think‟ and „believe‟. Table
6 demonstrates this result.
Table 6
Form
Freq.
No.
Episte
%
mic
1. Verb Think 7 53.8
Believe 5 38.5
%
2 Adverb Probabl 1 7.7
y
Based on these three
tables, Gillard language style
in political conference can be
65.8 generalized in three aspects.
They are (a) dominant use of
hedging devices (b) prefe-
rence to use non-epistemic
devices (c „think‟ and „be-
lieve‟ are the two types of
epistemic most used by her.
In her three confe-
rences, Gillard always res-
ponds question briefly and
not as lengthy as Obama. She
gives the information as it is
asked when considering it is
important. Once she says,
“absolutely, I can rule that
out one hundred per cent, one
hundred per cent”. Gillard
also shows politeness strategy
when she is praised for being
the first female PM, “well
there may be some firsts‟.
Everybody knows that there
is no woman in this position
in Australian government pre-
viously. Gillard uses hedging
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Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language

to look polite not just for 1. Verb Think 7 53.8

once. She used it in other
occasion too such as when Believe 5 38.5
asked to blame Rudd on 2010 2 Adve Probabl 1 7.7
election sabotage. She simply rb y
said, “The 20 0 election was
sabotage”. She maintained Other interesting thing
the face of Rudd in front of from the table is that, struc-
journalists by using passive turally, Gillard linguistic
construction to answer. features are in accordance
with Lakoff‟s hypothesis
3. Comparison Between Oba- (1976) that women use more
ma and Gillard Language hedging devices in commu-
Style nication than men. Here, Gil-
lard used more hedging
Hedging devices be- devices than Obama.
come the dominant feature of
Gillard speech. Obama uses E. Discussion
hedge and non-hedge almost The percentage of
equally in political speeches. statements containing hedge
In addition, Obama also uses are high, with 45% in
epistemic and non-epistemic Obama‟s statement and
with almost equal proportion 65.5% in Gillard‟s speech.
while Gillard has dominant From Obama, 38.9% has
usage in non-epistemic. The epistemic as linguistic device
similar feature between Oba- to hedge while Gillard only
ma and Gillard is the use of has 21%. To better un-
the epistemic „think‟, al- derstand what they meant by
though the latter also employ using these devices, NSM
„believe‟ as frequent. Table 7 approach will be used to
demonstrates this result. explicate.
Table 7 Based on NSM, any
declarative statement without
Epistemic

epistemic qualification means

Form

Freq.
No.

asserting the knowledge and

truth. The verb „know‟ in
statement tells knowledge and

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Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
if speaker says so, he has full
commitment to his assertion.
In politics, if politician says
„knows‟, he will bear the
responsibility if the statement
he says is proven wrong and
suffers from political con-
sequence such as being pub-
licly scolded. Conversely, if
„think‟ is used in statement, it
does not imply knowledge
and politicians intentionally
make his statement vague.
In these political con-
ferences, Gillard uses „know‟
when asked about Australian
negotiation of uranium with
India.
„We know how to
negotiate these agreements‟
Based on her state-
ment, it can be understood
that she had knowledge on
how to do negotiation with
India on strategic issues like
selling the chemical sub-
stance. This thing is certainty
and she was committed when
answering. Similar to this use
of „know‟ is the use of „be‟ in
Obama‟s statement. When he
was asked about a report from
NBC on certain mission that
labeled as creep, he said
282
„That report is inac-
curate‟
Obama knew exactly
what‟s happening in this
mission. Hence, Obama told
the journalist what actually
they wanted to know. Obama
did not have anything to hide
from them. However, politi-
cians are very aware to keep
and give information when
they are asked about sensitive
questions. Obama used „be-
lieve‟, when he was asked to
name what countries support
American military action to
Syria.
„I believe that there
will be a statement issued
later this evening.‟
By using NSM, this
„believe‟ in his statement can
be explicated as follow:
a. I say: I think now that it is
like this: “someone will
issue a statement this
evening”
b. I don‟t say I know
c. I can say why I think like
this: “I have reason”
d. I know that someone else
can think not like this
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
It was impossible that
Obama did not know the
information on this military
issue. He was the President
and he must be the first to
know. But, because of certain
reason („why‟ , indicated by
the meaning in (c) above, he
intentionally did not give the
required information. He
modified his answer with
„believe‟, although he con-
textually knew that the jour-
nalist could think differently
than him. The journalist could
say that Obama concealed
something. The (d) meaning
confirms this explanation.
In different occasion,
Gillard used „probably‟ when
she was requested by Indian
journalist about her plan to
meet Adani, the leader of
Adani enterprise that was
alleged of corruption in
media and would have a big
deal with Australian govern-
ment on uranium business.
„I probably will (meet
Adani ‟
a. I want to say how I think
when I think about this
b. I say: I will meet Adani
c. I don‟t say I know
d. I think that it can be like
this
283
e. I think like this because I
have thought about it for
some time
f. I think that other people
can think the same
It was impossible not
to meet with a very important
person that she wanted to
negotiate with. Gillard was in
India for official visit, Adani
was there too. But because of
certain reason, indicated by
meaning (e), Gillard did not
give the relevant and required
information to the Indian
reporter. That‟s why she uses
„probably‟. The reason here
could be that she did not want
her meeting to be monitored
by journalist.
From this use of
NSM, political statements
containing epistemic can be
comprehended better. With
NSM, what is covert can be
revealed.
F. Conclusion
Press conferences are
where politician‟s language
style and political view and
information meet. As a result,
politician uses hedging de-
vices in whatsoever forms as
strategy to express ideas
covertly. Language style of
politicians can be different
Jurnal Alasma, Vol.IV, No.2, Desember 2015_______ Hedging and Language
from one to another, as it is
shown by Obama and Gillard.
Since generalization cannot
be made from this study, it is
still unclear whether female
politicians use hedging devi-
ces more frequently than
male and whether male po-
liticians are more assertive by
using more non-hedging devi-
ces than female. Further
studies are needed to answer
this.
284
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Transcripts
Gillard‟s press conference
(the Australian)
http://www.theaustralia
n.com.au/national-
affairs/transcript-of-
julia-gillard-press-
conference-announcing-
ballot/story-fn59niix-
1226279635906>
Gillard‟s press conference in
Canberra
http://ministers.treasury
.gov.au/DisplayDocs.as
px?doc=transcripts/201
0/079.htm&pageID=00
4&min=wms&Year=&
DocType
286
Gillard‟s press conference in
India.
http://www.southasiati
mes.com.au/news/?p=3
175
Obama‟s press conference in
Russia.
http://articles.washingto
npost.com/2013-09-
06/politics/41818028_1
_tax-avoidance-tax-
evasion-u-s-default
Obama‟s press conference in
Sweden
http://articles.washingto
npost.com/2013-09-
04/politics/41744770_1
_sweden-s-chemical-
weapons-emissions
Obama‟s press conference in
the White House
http://articles.washingto
npost.com/2013-08-
09/politics/41225505_1
_civil-liberties-
oversight-board-open-
debate-surveillance-
programs