Abstract

The present study has been conducted for the linguistic analysis of hedging, which is meant to be an important linguistic feature expressing tentativeness and possibility. The purpose of the study is to investigate hedging devices in English and Azerbaijan economic and political newspaper editorials and to show the frequently used hedges in these stated languages. Basing on the revealed results, it becomes clear that in English newspaper editorials hedging is observed to be more frequently used. It is necessary to underline that the English political and economic newspaper editorials are seen to be more hedged than the Azerbaijan.

The article has been focused on the lexical and pragmatic hedges. Hedges pragmatically are realized to be the markers of politeness in the newspaper editorials in the very languages.

The modal verbs are considered to be the lexical hedges, and they have been dealt with from this side in the article as well. It is known that modal verbs are used to express the speaker’s attitude to the reality, and they help the speaker to express ideas indirectly as well. The article highlights the necessity of using the modal verbs in the newspaper editorials.

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