A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Hedging in Facebook Comments: A Sex- and Age-based Approach

The study investigates the effect of sex and age on the use of hedges in Facebook comments. The sample of the study consists of 300 comments written by native male and female Facebook users as their reflections to the same posts. The procedures followed in this study cover the discussion of the phenomenon and then its relation to world of social media. Then, an analysis of the posts of the sample of the study is tackled. The analysis aims at exploring whether the variables, sex and age, are traceable in reflecting the ways by which male and female language users can give their stances via hedging in Facebook comments. Hyland’s (2005) model is adopted in the process of analysis. The findings uncovered that there are fundamental contrasts with respect to sex and age in the area of hedging; female users make more use of hedges than male do in addition to the idea that the older one grows, the more use of hedges is.