Hedging and Hedge Words English Language Revision
A-Level English Language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAn2s3NjtSU

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:00 hello everyone and welcome to today's english language lesson which focuses specifically on hedging so what we will be covering today is
0:10 what is hedging examples of hedging and why people use it and how to write about hedging all of which will hopefully help you to
0:17 have a better understanding of this part of english language so what is hedging hedging is a part of polite conversation
0:26 where we make what we are saying less direct on the screen i've put a few examples of hedge words and phrases that we typically see
0:34 in speech and writing but unlike something like modal verbs which i look at in a different lesson there is not an exhaustive list of
0:41 hedging words and as with so many things in the english language it very much relies on the context
0:47 and for you to figure out if the words being used are making the language less direct if the answer is yes it's likely you've
0:54 come across a hedge word let's look at a real life example of hedging and this might be one used in school or a workplace environment we
1:03 have the sentence here this is not quite the standard i would expect of you now hopefully from reading this sentence
1:10 you can figure out that the hedge word here is quite and the purpose like with most examples of hedging
1:16 is to make what we are saying softer as without hedging the sentence would read this is not at the standard i would expect of you it's a lot more blunt
1:25 and therefore potentially more likely to cause offence let's look at a few more examples we have the following three sentences
1:32 each with the hedging words highlighted in red so we have we all need to work a little bit harder if we're going to make this happen i don't think i can come to
1:40 your party and perhaps you could try doing it the way i asked you to hopefully you can see in each example
1:48 the purpose is actually very similar all the hedge words make the sentences softer and therefore less likely to offend or get a negative
1:56 reaction from those receiving the texts whether they are spoken or written texts the first one is interesting as you
2:04 could talk about the idea of quantity that working a little bit harder seems more manageable than just saying to someone we need to work harder
2:13 and also it's perhaps less imposing on the person that you're speaking to as well the second one is an example that you
2:20 see so often in day-to-day speech when someone else has some bad news they very often use hedging even though it doesn't change the
2:28 meaning at all but you can imagine the reaction to someone saying i don't think i can come to your party versus someone saying i can't come to
2:35 your party helps to soften up that level of disappointment from reading the third one perhaps you
2:42 could try doing it the way i asked you to there is already the hint of a lot of subtext to this
2:48 so let's flesh out that last example of hedging just a little bit and look at this imagine conversation between two speakers david and heather
2:55 and then consider how we might write about this specific example so we have heather saying hi david i've just looked at the powerpoint you sent
3:02 over and i've noticed you've grouped the products alphabetically rather than by popularity
3:08 david replies yes i found that was the quickest way to do it and then heather uses the sentence we've seen previously perhaps you could try
3:16 doing it the way i asked you to so here is an example of how you might write about this particular use of hedging
3:24 i have said the use of the hedge word perhaps by heather makes her response appear softer and less direct it means that the utterance is formed as
3:31 an interrogative sentence rather than a direct imperative therefore helping to keep typical conventions of politeness even
3:39 though perhaps can be seen as an adverb which implies choice the context of this interaction and heather's apparent relative status
3:46 to david suggests there is little choice and this is in fact a direct order if you aren't sure what the other words highlighted in red mean please look at
3:55 my video on different sentence types and their functions hopefully you can see from this example that i've used the keyword hedging
4:02 i've considered the context of the interaction which is always so important in the study of english language for example i've noted that heather is
4:10 clearly more senior than david in this workplace this is never directly said but it's clear by the fact that he is
4:18 sending his work to her and she tells him how to do things and i've also explained with a bit of
4:23 detail the purpose and the effect of the hedging as always understanding the purpose is far more important than just listing the
4:31 technique that you found i hope you found this video on hedging useful if so please give it a thumbs up
4:38 subscribe to my channel and let me know in the comments if there is anything else that you would want me to cover