The Persuasive Power of Hedges: Insights from TED Talks

The corpus-based study focuses on the use of hedges in persuasive TED Talk speeches, which are powerful, premeditated speeches delivered a distinctive communicative environment that combines elements both spoken and written discourse. authors employ quantitative qualitative methods to analyze hedging devices used bolster three rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, logos. results show only 2% words corpus serve as devices, is lower compared previous studies incidence highest logos parts, followed by with lowest ethos. Strong credibility generally established avoiding devices. To evoke emotions audience, speakers mainly rely adverbs verbs. approximators shields strengthen resembles academic analysis four most commonly hedges: ‘actually’, ‘just’, ‘could’, ‘think’. ‘Actually’ has mitigating effect when it promotes intimacy, indicates speaker's commentary, or introduces challenging, even reinforcing effect. ‘Just’ often convey mildly positive reassuring tone communication. Both parenthetical phrase ‘I think’, variety meanings, modal verb hypothetical possibility, enhance logical strength an argument. paper suggests incorporating these findings into ESL teaching materials conducting further topic, existing focus developing scientific argument writing. Developing speech distinct deserves attention.