Abstract
The usage of hedges in trial discourse context is interested to be explored. This paper presents a description of phenomena related to the use of hedges by witnesses and experts in Indonesian court trial. It focuses on the usage of hedges in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and utterances in court trial context. Conversation among participants in court was taken as a corpus of this study. From the corpus, the data were collected in the form of transcription. Three-levels of hedges that classified by Lakoff (1973), Prince, et al. (1982), and Fraser (2010) were used to analyze the data. The analysis was also related to quantity maxim and quality maxim proposed by Grice maxim (1975). This study has shown that the usage of hedges in Indonesian was classified into propositional, approximator, and adjective hedges. They were used to show politeness as well as to hide the real meaning of their utterance.
Highlights
Lakoff (1973) defines hedge as “a word that involves fuzziness categories”
This study has shown that the usage of hedges in Indonesian was classified into propositional, approximator, and adjective hedges
It is shown that participant produced hedges that refer to quantity maxim
Summary
Lakoff (1973) defines hedge as “a word that involves fuzziness categories”. The definition of hedges as a linguistic phenomenon was strongly supported by Meyer (1994). He adopted the definition from Lakoff (1973), Fand (1989), and Brown and Levinson (1978). He stated that linguistic cues of bias are conducted to convey vagueness and tentativeness, and to make a sentence more acceptable to the hearer/reader. Undeniable, hedge in court trial has been a means to avoid making a definite statement or commitment in a court trial
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