Pragmatic Hedges in Editorials: A Focus on Vanguard, Guardian and Sun Newspaper Editorials in 2017

Abstract

Many studies have been carried out on the operations of hedges in different language discourse especially in scientific reports and academic writing. Amongst these studies, none has focused on the operations, functions and layout of hedges in Nigerian newspapers. It is on this basis therefor that the current study pays attention to the nature and pragmatic functions which hedges are deployed in Nigerian newspaper editorials. It is the academic gap which the present study unravels. The study used the categorisation of hedges provided by Salager Meyer (1994) as the theoretical framework. The study sampled six editorials each from the 2017 editorials of the Vanguard, Guardian and Sun newspapers, making a total of 18 editorials for analysis. At the end, the study present amongst other findings that the shield hedges are the more frequently used hedges in the newspaper editorials as all the newspapers used it. On the other hand, the study found out that no newspaper editorial used the compound hedge as there was none found in the sampled data.