THE USE OF HEDGING IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE: THE THIRD US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BARACK OBAMA VS MITT ROMNEY IN 2012.

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KRISTHIN ANGGRAINI, 2014

The Use Of Hedging In Political Discourse: The Third Us Presidential Debate Barack Obama Vs Mitt Romney In 2012

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The Use of Hedging in Political Discourse:

The Third US Presidential Debate Barack Obama vs Mitt

Romney in 2012

A RESEARCH PAPER

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Sarjana Sastra Degree in Indonesia University of Education

By

Kristhin Anggraini 0804631

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

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The Use of Hedging in Political Discourse:

The Third US Presidential Debate Barack Obama

vs Mitt Romney in 2012

Oleh

Kristhin Anggraini

Sebuah skripsi yang diajukan untuk memenuhi salah satu syarat memperoleh gelar Sarjana Sastra pada Fakultas Pendidkan Bahasa dan Seni

Juni 2014

Hak Cipta dilindungi undang-undang.

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PAGE OF APPROVAL

The Use of Hedging in Political Discourse:

The Third US Presidential Debate Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney in 2012

A Research Paper

By

Kristhin Anggraini 0804631

Approved by

Main Supervisor

Dadang Sudana, M.A., Ph.D. NIP. 196009191990031001

Co-Supervisor

Ripan Hermawan, S.S., M.A. NIP. 198010242005011001

Head of Department of English Education Faculty of Language and Arts Education

Indonesia University of Education

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents an introductory section of the study. It covers background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, methodology, and organization of the paper.

1.1 Background

Language use is not purposeless (Eggins, 2004, p. 5). Politicians, for instance, use language to communicate certain information or a point of view to convince and set the minds of the public. They need to be careful in conveying their intentions. They may use the linguistic devices such as hedges to create a certain effect so that the statements do not sound rude and forced. The term

“hedges” refers to the use of linguistic means which aims to “make sentences

more acceptable” (Hübler, 1983, p. 23) since the nature of the devices minimizes the possible imposition, threat or force of the statement (Holmes, 2013, p. 72; Martín-Martín, 2008, p. 134; Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 186). As a matter of fact, hedges play an important role in order to make the communication goes smoothly, especially when politicians do not have the exact information to be declared.

Furthermore, hedges help them to manipulate language in shaping people’s

thought. Those are also used by them in a formal debate in order to maintain the importance of not making mistakes in public communication. Clearly, they use hedges to seek an agreement and avoid a potential embarrassment when the unintended rejection is indicated by interlocutors. It takes a great consideration that the effect of hedging is a pragmatic phenomenon and the interpretation of hedges depends on its context (Clemen, 1997, p. 243).

As discussed earlier, hedges as part of language are an effective way to

persuade people. It is because hedges are used “to give the impression of being

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2 Hedges can also be used to soften the statements. Lakoff (1972, p. 471) states that hedges are purposefully taken to make meaning uncertain and sounds imprecise. The concept of hedging as the means to soften statements has broadly discussed within the pragmatic study (Brown & Levinson, 1987). In this perspective, hedges have a close connection to the concept of face which deals with the desire to maintain the face of oneself or the face of another person. According to Martín-Martín (2008, p. 134), the devices allow the politicians to implicitly hide and weaken the strength of the statement. Therefore, interlocutor or audience would unconsciously take the message as a fact. Furthermore, Markkanen and Schröder (1997, p. 8) explain that hedges show oneself’s avoidance of leaning responsibility for the correctness of the statement. Since the statement contains the estimations, the avoidance effect of the devices allows the politicians to set themselves free from the possible denial if they are proven wrong. From the explanation above, it is clear that hedges can be employed as devices to soften the statements and avoid the rejection.

People who use hedging devices are motivated for some reasons. The first reason is the need to take an agreement and acceptance of the statement from the interlocutor (Hübler, 1983, p. 23). Through the use of hedging devices, politicians

manipulate language to shape the interlocutor’s thought. It can be said that it is an

attempt to avoid the possible rejection and negotiation addressed by the interlocutor to them. The second reason which motivates them to use the hedging devices is closely related to the politeness phenomena (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 146). During the communication process, the self-mage is still at risk (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 61; Ting-Toomey, 2005, p. 73) and the speaker should beable to manage the safety of self-image by using the hedging devices. The main aim of hedging investigation is to evaluate the specific reason or motivation of why the speakers hedge, the tendency of the speakers to use hedging devices in expressing ideas in communication.

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3 academic discourse (Hidayati et al., 2008; Nivales, 2008), and newspaper discourse (Buitkiene, 2008; Mahanani, 2013). Political discourse is one of the interesting topics to be investigated by using the theory of hedging. Laurinaityte (2011), for instance, analyzed the 12 political speeches delivered before and after the United States of America presidential elections, namely before and after November 4th, 2008 for Obama and before and after November 7th, 2000 for Bush. The analysis showed that pre-election speeches contained more hedging devices than post-election ones. The results indicated that the heavy use of hedges in pre-election speeches wasmotivated by some reasons. The first reason was supported by the desire to protect the politicians themselves of being rejected for the ideas and attitudes. The heavy use of hedges in pre-election speeches was also motivated by the desire to mitigate the force of imposition which is carried by the statement. In short, the mitigation feature of hedges helps the speakers camouflage the identity in persuading the interlocutors without forcing them to believe in the information. In addition, Al-Rashady (2012) examined the frequent use of certain hedging devices on the three presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain during the 2008 U.S. election cycle. The analysis concluded that the features of hedging devices are useful in order to attain an effective communication especially in the context of formal debate.

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1.2Research Questions

This study is geared toward answering the following research questions: 1. What are hedging devices used by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

during the third United States of America presidential debate in 2012? 2. What are the functions of hedging devices used by each US presidential

candidate in relation to the concept of face?

1.3Aims of the Study

Based on the research questions, the aims of the study are as follows: 1. To investigate the use of hedging devices by Barack Obama and Mitt

Romney during the third United States of America presidential debate in 2012.

2. To investigate the functions of hedging devices used by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the third United States of America presidential debate in 2012 in relation to the concept of face.

1.4Scope of the Study

This study is limited to investigating the use of hedging in political discourse in the third as the final United States of America presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on October 22nd, 2012 from the perspective of discourse analysis and theory of hedging within the pragmatic view.

1.5Significance of the Study

This study provides useful information both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, this study can enhance the literature about the use of hedging in political discourse or give academic input toward the use of hedging in general. Practically, through the result of the study, it can help the readers to build the awareness about how reliable or credible politicians are.

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5 In this study, a qualitative approach was used. Since this study involved an in-depth focus and understanding on a single phenomenon within the real life context (Yin, 2009, p. 18), a case study was used as its design.

The data of the study were taken from the official website of the United States of American government, www.whitehouse.gov. The data were analyzed into two stages. The first stage aimed to investigate the hedging devices used by the two US presidential candidates during the third presidential debate on October 22nd, 2012. It involved the process of identifying, classifying and calculating the hedging device distributions and strategies by using the theory of hedging proposed by Martín-Martín (2005, 2008) and Salager-Meyer (1997). The next stage was the process of investigating the functions of hedging devices in relation to the concept of face. It was associated with the dimensions of orientation of face within the face negotiation theory developed by Ting-Toomey (1988, 1994, 2005).

1.7Organization of the Paper

The paper is organized as follows: 1) The first chapter: Introduction

It provides the background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, methodology, and organization of the paper.

2) The second chapter: Literature Review

It discusses the theories and concepts which are employed to answer the research questions.

3) The third chapter: Research Methodology

It deals with the research methodology, discussing the steps and procedures of the study, and clarification of terms.

4) The fourth chapter: Findings and Discussion

It consists of the result of the study and the answer of research questions as well as the discussion and the interpretation of the findings.

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter elaborates the methodology applied in this study. It covers the research design, data collection, data analysis, and clarification of terms. This study was geared toward answering the research questions. The first research question aimed to investigate the use of hedging devices by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the United States of America presidential debate on October 22nd, 2012. The second research question aimed to investigate the functions of hedging devices used by Obama and Romney during the debate in relation to the concept of face.

3.1 Research Design

In this study, a qualitative approach was used. Since this study involved an in-depth focus and understanding on a single phenomenon within the real life context (Yin, 2009, p. 18), a case study was used as its design. It was conducted purposefully in order to gain an in-depth understanding of human behaviors through the process of identification, classification and the description of the findings.

This study focused on the investigation of a single phenomenon, namely the examination of the use of hedging in the third US presidential debate in 2012. Furthermore, the use of a case study in this study played a role as a means to understand, to elaborate and to interpret the single case on a certain context naturally in the absence of external interventions.

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30 Ting-Toomey (1988, 1994, 2005) to investigate the functions of hedging devices in relation to the concept of face.

3.2 Data Collection

The data of this study were the transcription of the US presidential debate on October 22nd, 2012. The data served as the primary source in this study and third one considered as the final debate in which the candidates were declared as draw on 3rd and 16th October 2012 as the matter to investigate. The selected data was investigated to highlight the use of hedging devices as a powerful tool and linguistic strategy which helped the presidential candidates to win the debate and gained the masses. The transcription of the debate consisted of 17.381 words, which were separated into 8.148 words and 64 turn-takings for Mitt Romney, while 7.209 words and 56 turn-takings for Barack Obama.

3.3 Data Analysis

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31 In the first stage, the hedging devices were analyzed by using hedging theory proposed by Martín-Martín (2005, 2008) and Salager-Meyer (1997). The stage consisted of five steps. The first step was done by doing close reading toward the transcription. It was followed by the rest four steps; the identifying process, the classifying process, and both calculating process of frequency from the distributions of types and strategies in order to answer the first research question.

As the first step, the transcription of the debate was read closely for several times in order gain a better understanding on every detail of information which was discussed during the debate. The second step in the first stage was the process of identification of hedging devices. It was performed manually by giving the code to the linguistic units which were considered as hedging devices in the form of words and clausal constructions.

The third step was the process of classification of the six types of hedging devices into three different types of hedging strategies. Each hedging device was categorized into which type of hedging and strategies they belonged to. This step intended to seek the general distributions of linguistic devices as word classes as well as clausal constructions into six different types of hedging devices. The following table presents the classification of hedging devices based on the types and strategies. It is also followed by a sample analysis.

Table 3.1 The Classification of Hedging Devices No The Categorization of

“But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy,

you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the

1980s.” (Obama, 7, line 5)

b. Epistemic Lexical Verb

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32 c. Verb of Cognition “But when i't comes to our military, what we have to

thinkabout is not just budgets.” (Obama, 91, 13) 1.3 Modal Adverb “This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s

been told during the course of this campaign.”

(Obama, 108, line 2)

1.4 Modal Noun “Governor, your suggestion was that this was mission

creep, that this was mission muddle.” (Obama, 40, line

9)

1.5 Modal Adjective “We want to end those conflicts to the extent humanly possible.” (Romney, 56, line 6)

2. Approximators

2.1of quantity “We didn’t have a lot of chance to talk about this in

the last debate.” (Obama, 61, line 7)

2.2of degree “We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the

military action.” (Obama, 99, line 16)

Strategy of Subjectivisation

“The form-function distinction is particularly important in the case of clause structure, which we shall now discuss in some detail as the most familiar

and important illustration of functional classification”

(Quirk et al., 1985, p. 48) Strategy of Depersonalisation 5. Agentless Passive and

Impresonal Constructions

“It appears that some studies tend to over-estimate the

potential of politeness markers.” (Vartalla, 2001, p. 75)

6. Impersonal Active Constructions

“The result suggested the important role of context in shaping the text and in deciding on the degree of

mitigating language.” (Alavi, 2011, p. 56)

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33 personal opinion as if there is a chance for China to be associated and make a partnership with the United States of America. Furthermore, Halliday (1994, p. 76) categorizes the modal can as “low value modality” in expressing possibility. It means that the use of modal auxiliary verb can indicates the high degree of

hesitation, uncertainty, or doubt of the speaker’s personal judgment toward the

possibility of something (He, 1998, p. 59). Thus, the use of modal auxiliary verb

can in Table 3.1 point 1.1 shows that Romney as the speaker is not confident on the possibility of the statement. At the same time, he does also not fully hesitate on the chance of the situation to happen.

The process of calculation was conducted to investigate the frequency of hedging occurrences based on the distributions of data; both the frequency and percentage of the general distributions of hedging devices and hedging strategies used by each US 2012 presidential candidate. The following was the relative frequency formula which was used to facilitate the process on fourth and fifth step in stage one.

Relative Frequency =

= Frequency of an individual item n = Total number of frequencies

The second stage aimed to investigate the functions of hedging devices used by each presidential candidate in relation to the concept of face. The function

was associated with the dimension of the face’s orientation within the face negotiation theory developed by Ting-Toomey (1988, 1994, 2005). In this stage,

the presidential candidates’ face orientation was clearly understood by the

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the speaker’s own self-image or the interlocutor’s. The data was described and interpreted this stage.

3.4Clarification of Terms

In order to avoid misunderstanding and misconception, the following is the clarification of the terms used in this study:

1. The term “hedges” is defined as the linguistic units which modify the content of the statement with regard to minimize the force of the possible imposition which is carried by the statement (Martín-Martín, 2008, p. 134).

2. Political discourse is defined as the spoken and written form of communication in the area of political activities which is performed by the professional politicians in a formal setting (Van Dijk, 1997, p. 12).

3. Debate, according to Merriam Webster, is the formal discussion toward the particular questions which involved two or more contestants with different sides of belief and point of view under the set of parliamentary procedure (http://www.merriam-webster.com).

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

This chapter presents the conclusion which is drawn from the findings and discussion in the previous chapter. This chapter also presents the suggestion for further study.

5.1 Conclusion

This study investigates the use of hedging devices by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney during the third United States of America presidential debate on October 22nd, 2012. The study also analyzes the functions of hedging devices in relation to the concept of face of each speaker.

The finding shows that there are 111 occurrences of hedging devices used by Obama and 134 occurrences for Romney. The finding also shows that Obama uses hedging devices in the form of epistemic modality (77.48%), the approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time (11.71%), and the introductory phrases (10.81%). Similarly, Romney also frequently uses epistemic modality (74.62%), the approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time (9.70%), and the introductory phrases (15.68%).

The finding shows the heavy application of the strategy of indetermination. It is indicated by the combination of the use of epistemic modality and approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time (Martín-Martín, 2005, 2008) by both Obama (89.19%) and Romney (84.32%). Both speakers made an effective use of both components to convey the personal speculation, judgment, prediction, and estimation to manipulate the accuracy of the case being discussed in the context with different degree of certainty and confidence. Aside from the nature of epistemic modality and approximators, the application of both components which is defined as the realization of the strategy of indetermination of hedging devices by both speakers indicates the behavior or

action which secures the speaker’s own position with a relatively high degree of

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87 As far as the orientation of face concerned, the motivation of both Obama and Romney for taking such action is the consideration to satisfy the needs of the self-positive face and the self-negative face of the speakers (Ting-Toomey, 1988, 1994, 2005). It means that through the use of hedging devices both Obama and Romney emphasize the necessity to be approved by the interlocutor (Ting-Toomey, 1988, cited in Ng, 2009, p. 162), to defend their reputation and to release themselves from the possible violation or rejection (Ting-Toomey, 1994, cited in Morisaki and Gudykunst, 1994, p. 53) by honoring the interlocutor in a way of toning down or not imposing the subjectivity of the personal speculation.

In rhetorics, the politicians in a formal presidential debate are extremely concerned with idea of being precise and trustworthy (ethos), logical (logos) and emotionally convincing (pathos) (Aristotle, 1356, cited in Ross, 2010, pp. 7-8). Hence, Obama and Romney use hedges as an effective rhetorical device to persuade and convince the audience and the people of the United States of America. The feature of hedging devices allows the politicians to camouflage their identity in a public communication. It means that hedges tone down the

absoluteness of the personal speculation’s subjectivity and manipulate the

precision of information to convince the interlocutor as if it is supported by evidence.

The primary function of the hedging devices used by Obama and Romney is to protect the safety of their reputation, status, needs. The use of the devices is motivated by the necessity to be approved by the interlocutor and/ or the people of the United States of America. Both politicians are also concerned about the need to set themselves free from the responsibility for a potential blame, the possible denial, rejection and violation of the interlocutor. Obama and Romney take an advantage of the use of hedging devices in order to manipulate the interlocutor’s

and/ or the public’s mind, so that they would agree on the idea of the personal

speculation during the debate and give them vote in the general elections of the United States of America in 2012.

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88 This section provides some suggestions for the further study. First, this study focuses only on the analysis of hedging devices on the third United States of America presidential debate on October 22nd, 2012. Further study may conduct an analysis with the same framework using larger data. For instance, the study focuses on the presidential debate on a period of time which consists of three different dates and themes. Second, this study only deals with the analysis of hedging devices on the debate. Further study may consider on other varieties of political discourse to be analyzed. For instance, the study focuses on the analysis of hedging devices in the political interviews, the presidential speeches and remarks, and so on.