Hedges as metadiscourse in Pakistani english newspaper editorials: a corpus-based study

Hedges are uncertainty markers that writers use to soften and make a writer’s uncertain about the contents. Hedges as metadiscourse in Pakistani English Newspaper Editorials (PENE) have been analysed. This is a corpus-based study. A corpus of 1000 editorials in Pakistani English Newspapers such as Dawn News (DN), The Express Tribune (TET), The News (TN) and The Frontier (TF) has been developed for this research study. 250 editorials from each newspaper has been taken from online sources. The aim of research is finding frequencies out of PENE, and its comparison of frequencies on the basis of propositional and non-propositional materials. The purpose of this study is interpreting hedges as metadiscourse in PENE. The present study has proposed a new extensive scheme of hedges. A model on hedges has been proposed after listing of previous models on hedges. The current study has categorized the proposed model into the Expression of uncertainty, Conditional clauses, and Impersonal Expressions and Reported Speech. The results have revealed that the most frequent markers of ‘Hedges’ are seen only in the corpus of The Frontier (TF). In conclusion, the writers create uncertainty and make the readers uncertain about their stance. The writers let the readers to decide and make their minds about the issue. This sort of attitude of the writers makes the readers to generalize the results.