Writing comparison over Hedges

Abstract

Hedges have qualified themselves as appealing linguistic
phenomenon which is evident from the work over them which indicates
that the majority of hedge studies are concerned with academic or
scientific writings. In the present work, a database of Hedges has been
compiled. Frequently used hedges in highly cited articles are
categorized based on the paradigms proposed by Hyland and Yu. Next,
an endeavor has been made to compare the usage and effects of hedges
in the novels ‘Midnight’s Children’ and ‘The Satanic Verses’ by Sir
Ahmad Salman Rushdie. Occurrences of various hedges in the source
text of both novels have been recounted through a computer program.
Each category of hedge is assigned a weight and the hedge category
with highest weight is identified in the above mentioned literary works.
The two works are then compared over the usage of hedges by the
author. Finally, the role of highly frequent hedge categories used by the
author in his writings is studied.