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Gender differences in the use of modal adverbs as hedges
University of Gävle, Faculty of Education and Business Studies, Department of Humanities.
2020 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The aim of this essay is to investigate the claims made by Robin Lakoff regarding women’s language, where she claims that women use hedges more than men. The aim of this essay is to investigate whether this statement is true. To put it differently, this essay aims to look at gender differences in the use of modal adverbs as hedges. As a method, a frequency analysis has been conducted, where data from the British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014) has been used. Since hedging involves various linguistic forms, this essay focuses on the modal adverbs presented by Huddleston and Pullum. The results show that women do use more hedges than men. Regardless, there are not any major dissimilarities across genders. Although there were some findings that supported Lakoff’s claims, there were also some that contradicted her claims.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 22
Keywords [en]
hedges, politeness, modality, modal adverbs, gender, women’s language
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-34030OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hig-34030DiVA, id: diva2:1472113
Subject / course
English
Educational program
Upper Secondary Teacher Education Programme
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2020-10-01 Created: 2020-09-30 Last updated: 2020-10-01Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • harvard-cite-them-right
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • sv-SE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • de-DE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf