Hedging in a job interview setting : A corpus study of male and female use of hedges in spoken English

Abstract: The study aimed to find out to what extent males and females used lexical hedges during job interviews. The different functions of hedges that men and women used were also examined. A taxonomy of hedges as well as a list of specific examples of hedges were derived from Hyland (1994, 1996). These were then used to find all instances of hedges used by selected job applicants in a job interview corpus by Wawra (2014). The results showed that out of the five grammatical categories of lexical hedges examined, women used more hedges than men overall. More specifically, females used hedges from the category lexical verbs more often than men, while men instead used hedges from the categories adverbs, adjectives and modal verbs more often than women. As for the functions of hedges, both genders often relied on hedges to express a lack of commitment. Men used hedges to initiate word searches to a greater extent than women. On the other hand, women used hedges to avoid the role of expert as well as to show consideration for others’ feelings more often than men.