Features of Hedging Strategies Performed by the Federal Reserve Chair in Press Conferences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1411.17Keywords:
hedging strategies, Press Conferences of the Fed, pragmatic functions, Adaptation TheoryAbstract
This study examined the pragmatic functions of hedging strategies used by the Federal Reserve System (Fed) Chair during press conferences. The Fed’s significant influence on U.S. monetary policy and global financial markets makes its communication methods crucial yet linguistically underexplored. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to examine the frequency and types of hedges, their situational usage, and pragmatic functions. The findings revealed a notable use of approximators and shields to adapt to the complexities of financial communication, with adaptors and plausibility shields being the most common. The Fed Chair employed hedging strategies to address sensitive economic issues, uncertain policies, and matters affecting financial markets and public perception. These hedging strategies were used to mitigate potential criticism, enhance flexibility, soften the tone, maintain credibility, ensure effective information delivery, and improve politeness. The study contributed to the understanding of linguistic hedging strategies in financial communication and underscored the strategic use of language in economic policy-making and financial stability.
References
Abulimiti, A., Clavel, C., & Cassell, J. (2023). How about kind of generating hedges using end-to-end neural models? Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 1, 877-892. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.50
Adrian, D., & Fajri, M. S. A. (2023). Hedging practices in soft science research articles: A corpus-based analysis of Indonesian authors. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2249630
AL-Jawadi, A. M. (2022). The analysis of translated hedges in Trump’s political speeches and interviews. International Journal of English Linguistics, 12(2), 47. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v12n2p47
Almutairi, M., Nouf, A., & Zitouni, M. (2022). The uses and functions of Barack Obama’s hedging language in selected speeches. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(1), 73-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.32601/ejal.911520
Al-Mudhaffari, M., Hussin, S., & Ho Abdullah, I. (2020). Interactional strategies in L2 writing: An exploration of hedging and boosting strategies in applied linguistics research articles. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes2000.20.1.9
Anthony, L. (2024). AntConc (Version 4.3.1) [Computer software]. Waseda University. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software
Bloor, M., & Bloor, T. (2017). How economists modify propositions. In Economics and Language (pp. 153-169). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203421581-8
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Vol. 4). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511813085
Carretero, M. (2023). Knowledge and belief in the times of COVID-19: A comparative analysis of epistemicity in English newspaper discourse of two stages of the pandemic. Applied Corpus Linguistics, 3(2), 100054. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2023.100054
Chen, C., & Zhang, L. J. (2017). An intercultural analysis of the use of hedging by Chinese and Anglophone academic English writers. Applied Linguistics Review, 8(1), 1-34. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/applirev-2016-2009
Chen, L., & Li, C. (2023). Interactional metadiscourse in news commentaries: A corpus-based study of China Daily and The New York Times. Journal of Pragmatics, 212, 29-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.04.018
Donohue, J. P. (2006). How to support a one-handed economist: The role of modalisation in economic forecasting. English for Specific Purposes, 25(2), 200-216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.02.009
Fleming, M. J., & Remolona, E. M. (1999). Price formation and liquidity in the US Treasury market: The response to public information. The Journal of Finance, 54(5), 1901-1915. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/0022-1082.00172
Harmon, D. J. (2019). When the Fed speaks: Arguments, emotions, and the microfoundations of institutions. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(3), 542-575. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839218777475
Hyland, K. (1996). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied linguistics, 17(4), 433-454. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/17.4.433
Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in scientific research articles. John Benjamins Publishing Company. http://digital.casalini.it/9789027282583
Jacobides, M. G., Drexler, M., & Rico, J. (2014). Rethinking the future of financial services: A structural and evolutionary perspective on regulation. Journal of Financial Perspectives, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.2298/PAN1103407S
Johansen, S. H. (2020). A contrastive approach to the types of hedging strategies used in Norwegian and English informal spoken conversations. Contrastive Pragmatics, 2(1), 81-105. https://doi.org/10.1163/26660393-12340006
Kartikasari, I. (2019). Comparison of hedging devices in published research articles by Indonesian and English native writers: A corpus based study. Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora, 7(2), 38-45.
Lakoff, G. (1973). Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2(4), 458–508. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00262952
Liu, J. (2020). A pragmatic analysis of hedges from the perspective of politeness principle. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 10(12). https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1012.15
Liu, T. (2024). A comparative study on epistemic modality in linguistic research article conclusions. Theory Practice in Language Studies, 14(2), 476-484. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1402.19
McLaren-Hankin, Y. (2008). ‘We expect to report on significant progress in our product pipeline in the coming year’: Hedging forward-looking statements in corporate press releases. Discourse Studies, 10(5), 635-654. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445608094216
Narain, N., & Sangani, K. (2023). The market impact of Fed communications: The role of the press conference. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4354333
Nelson, E. (2021). The emergence of forward guidance as a monetary policy tool. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3784642
Prince, E. F., Frader, J., & Bosk, C. (1982). On hedging in physician-physician discourse. Linguistics and the Professions, 8(1), 83-97.
Rahmatillah, Muhammad Basri Wello, & Nur, S. (2022). Types and reasons for using hedges in EFL speaking class. Journal of Art, Humanity & Social Studies, 2(5), 79-89.
Raphalen, Y., Clavel, C., & Cassell, J. (2022). “You might think about slightly revising the title”: Identifying hedges in peer-tutoring interactions. Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 1, 2160-2174. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.acl-long.153
Resche, C. (2004). Investigating ‘Greenspanese’: from hedging to ‘fuzzy transparency’. Discourse Society, 15(6), 723-744. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926504046502
Rosanti, E. D., & Jaelani, A. (2015). The use of lexical hedges in spoken language by female and male students. English Journal, 9(1), 29-39. https://doi.org/10.32832/english.v9i1.251
Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 13(2), 149-170. https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(94)90013-2
Schmauss, L. S., & Kilian, K. (2023). Hedging with modal auxiliary verbs in scientific discourse and women’s language. Open Linguistics, 9(1), 20220229. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0229
Varttala, T. (1999). Remarks on the communicative functions of hedging in popular scientific and specialist research articles on medicine. English for Specific Purposes, 18(2), 177-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(98)00007-6
Vass, H. (2017). Lexical verb hedging in legal discourse: The case of law journal articles and Supreme Court majority and dissenting opinions. English for Specific Purposes, 48, 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.07.001
Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding pragmatics. London: Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404501231054
Yang, Z., & Li, L. (2022). No straight talk here: A multi-level analysis of hedging strategies employed by the Fed Chair in press conferences. Journal of Pragmatics, 188, 141-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.12.004
Yu, Q., & Wen, R. (2022). A corpus-based quantitative study on the interpersonal functions of hedges in Chinese and German academic discourse. Heliyon, 8(9), e10698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10698
Zadeh, L. A. (1973). Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC-3(1), 28-44. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.1973.5408575
