Pragmatic Syncretism in the Use of Hedges (Based on Russian Thesis Reviews)

Abstract

Introduction. The article deals with pragmatic syncretism and syncretic aspects of hedges – words and phrases used to mitigate claims, that is make them vaguer, more tentative and more uncertain. Hedges are looked upon as a type of discourse markers which are focused on the writer-reader interaction and the writer’s self-presentation.Methodology and sources. The research is based on the speech genre of the official thesis review known for its especially mitigated language, which may be determined by publicity of thesis defences at a viva voce in Russia, positive evaluation of thesis made at a predefence stage and potential personal relations of the degree seeker, their supervisor and the reviewer. The corpus of 64 reviews (about 90 000 words) written by Russian scholars was analyzed including reviews in linguistics, literature studies, history, physics, chemistry and medicine.Results and discussion. The author introduces the notion of pragmatic syncretism which involves the merging or assimilation of several pragmatic functions performed by one linguistic unit while realizing several illocutionary tasks. The research allowed to single out two varieties of hedges: 1) single purpose hedges aimed only at mitigation of claims and 2) general purpose hedges aimed at mitigation of claims together with some other interactive task. Among these additional tasks are the following: authorization (self-mentions), performative, evaluative in relation both to the proposition or to the words used by the author. According to the quantitative analysis, syncretic hedges make up 52 % of all hedges used in the reviews. The author provides the pragmatically oriented analysis of syncretic hedges realizing strategies of indetermination, subjectivisation and depersonalization. Strategies of subjectivisation and depersonalization are registered as most frequent.Conclusion. It is emphasized that hedges are predisposed to syncretic usage due to their inherent modal meanings which are realized integrally and which are, therefore, difficult to specify. The ontological ground of this tendency is associated with the symbiotic nature of human thinking where rational and sensuous baselines are naturally and productively reconciled.