Hedging in spoken conversations by Norwegian learners of English

Stine Hulleberg Johansen

doi:10.46364/njmlm.v8i2.751

Abstract

Hedging is an important aspect of pragmatic competence, but it is also a complex phenomenon that is difficult to master. This has resulted in underuse of hedging strategies by language learners, and many learners limit their hedging repertoire to a few strategies. This study compares the use of 10 hedging expressions commonly used in informal spoken English, a bit, I mean, I think, just, kind of/kinda, like, might, probably, thing(s), and you know, in data from LINDSEI-no, a corpus of Norwegian advanced learners, and LOCNEC, a comparable corpus of native English speakers. Norwegian learners typically show a high level of grammatical competence, but research on their pragmatic competence is limited. This study adds to the empirical research on Norwegian advanced learners by comparing the use of these expressions in native and learner language. The results indicate that as a group, Norwegian learners underuse hedging strategies, but when each expression and individual variation are considered, the picture is more nuanced. In fact, several of the Norwegian learners’ hedging practices partially overlap with several of the native speakers’ practices concerning hedging frequency and types of hedging strategies used.

Highlights

Norwegian learners generally perform well on European language tests measuring various aspects of grammatical competence;1 less is known about their pragmatic competence
If we look at the dispersion of each hedging strategy (Figures 2 and 3), native speakers generally exhibit more variation than Norwegian learners
This paper aimed to discover potential differences in the use of 10 hedging expressions by Norwegian advanced learners of English and native English speakers

Summary

Introduction

Norwegian learners generally perform well on European language tests measuring various aspects of grammatical competence; less is known about their pragmatic competence. Learners’ grammatical and pragmatic competence tends to develop unevenly (Romero-Trillo, 2002, 70). Whereas acquiring pragmatic competence in one’s first language is “an unconscious process which co-occurs with socialisation and acculturation into the community into which one is born” (Holmes et al, 2020, 1), learners in a non-target environment acquire the target language asynchronously through formal instruction. This study investigates hedging, a complex aspect of pragmatic competence that may cause problems for language learners. As with many pragmatic features, these forms often do not correspond across languages (Romero-Trillo, 2018), and such cross-linguistic differences may lead learners to favour certain pragmatic expressions.

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