Exploring the Use of Probes in a Corpus Pragmatic Study of Hedging Strategies

Abstract

The majority of corpus studies of pragmatic phenomena deal with the functions of predefined forms. Moving in the opposite direction-searching for functions in order to identify the forms that can realize them-is impossible unless the corpus is annotated for pragmatic functions. This study explores a possible way around this problem: The use of probes. This strategy is tested as a means to identify hedging strategies in Norwegian and English spoken corpora. The probes men and but, signalling disagreement or contrast, are used as markers of face-threatening situations in which hedging strategies are likely to occur. The results show that clauses with men/but more frequently contain hedging than random clauses do, although the difference is statistically significant only for Norwegian. The use of probes thus seems to be a promising way forward, and future studies should aim at identifying even better probes with higher co-occurrence rates for the forms of interest.