How Many Times Have you Cheated on an Exam? A Study on Numerical Hedging in Response to Questions Beginning with Chand bar? (How many?) in Persian

The present paper investigates numerical hedging in response to questions beginning with Chand bar /ʧӕnd bӕr/ (How many) in Persian. To this end, forty semi-structured interviews were conducted using a questioner consisting of twenty eight questions beginning with chand bar which elicited answers including numerical hedging. The results of the study indicate that most respondents think that in an answer with numerical hedging the speaker s real intent is the smaller number in the set. Also, the interviewees expressed not being sure and saving face as the main motives behind answering such questions with numerical hedges. The results of this study can be used to guess the real answer of respondents in high stake situations such as interviews and interrogations when they use numerical hedging in order to evade from giving an exact answer.