An Investigation of Hedges and Boosters in Pakistani Opinion Articles: A Corpus-based Study

Investigation of Hedges and Boosters in Pakistani Opinion Articles: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

Hedges and boosters are very important in writing as these expressions indicate the writers‘ standpoint. Previous studies (Abbas & Shehzad, 2018; Zafar, 2018) show that a little work has been done in Pakistan on hedges and boosters; especially in newspaper opinion articles.The current study aims at investigating the most frequently occurring hedges and boosters in Pakistani newspaper opinion articles and to analyze writers‘ stance of using hedges and boosters in writing opinion articles. The data was collected from 5 Pakistani English newspapers; The Dawn, The Pakistan Observer, The Express Tribune, The Nation and The Daily Times. 50 opinion articles were randomly taken from these newspapers and comprises a corpus of 47927 words. The articles chosen were written by different authors and these were published in November, 2018. MetaPak (Abbas, Shehzad, & Ghalib, 2017) software was used to extract the hedges and boosters from the corpus. The frequencies of these hedgesa and boosters were represented through graphs. The researchers analyzed and discussed thesehedges and boosters in order to analyze writers‘ standpoints. The software showed the total frequency of would, could and should to be 143 times, 60 times and 61 times respectively in the corpus. After the manual analysis of the collocations of these words, it was revealed that the occurrence of could and would as a hedge is 58 each and of should as a booster is also 58.The findings of the study showed that most frequently occurring hedge markers were would and could and the most frequently occurring booster was should. After the analysis of the data, it was found that the use of hedge marker by the writer showed his stance of being cautious and careful in his writings. The writers, in many cases, do not want to promise themselves to the statements; rather they are more uncertain in their words and opinions they make. This finding showed that the Pakistani writers‘ do not speak explicitly but keep themselves at a distance in projecting their stance. On the other hand, the findings concluded that in the use of boosters there is certainty in writers‘ voice. It also showed that the writers‘ is voice seemed confident and assertive. The study reveals that the employment of boosters in writings is because the writer wants his readers to be convinced about their opinions andsuggestions.