A A Corpus Study of Hedges and Boosters in the Final Investigation Report of Joint Investigation Team of Panama Case

Study of Hedges and Boosters in the Final Investigation Report of Joint Investigation Team of Panama Case

Abstract

Legal discourse has been the focus of research especially from the perspective of
pedagogy in recent years (Baffy, 2017; Lebovits, 2002; Fakhri, 2009; Hartig, 2016). In some
previous research studies, researchers have attempted to study judges‟ rulings/verdicts in terms
of rhetorics, syntax, and semantics. This study, unlike previous studies, will focus on pragmatics
also, especially the use of Hedges and Boosters as metadiscourse markers in analyzing the Final
Investigation Report of Joint Investigation Team of Panama Case- Pakistan-2017. For doing this,
the researchers applied the adapted Hyland‟s (2005) model of metadiscourse through a corpus
tool named MetaPak and found some interesting results. Firstly, the most preferred Boosters
with the minimum frequency of 10 were found 12 out of 47. These 12 Boosters were employed
219 times which is almost 60.83% of totally employed boosting devices, i.e., 360. Secondly, the
most dominant Hedges employed were 9 with total occurrences of 188 (57.50%) out of 327 with
the minimum frequency of 10. Finally, prototypicality of boosting and hedging was also
witnessed indicating specific genre features of investigation reports. This prototypicality in our
view determines the genre identity of investigation reports as quasi legal genre.