Ellen Pomphenere Hedge

It can be notably highlighted from the table above that women have tendency to use hedges slightly more than men. This result seems to correspond with some studies indicated at the beginning of the essay. Although the hedge “like” is considered as the pragmatic particles, it is used in many different ways. “Like” can work as a hedge but can also contribute grammatical function in a sentence. “Like” usually interprets an ambiguity which comes from the original use with the meaning “similar to” or “approximate”. For instance, there is a conversation between Ellen Pompeo and Ellen DeGeneres:
ED (Ellen DeGeneres): Five. And how did she accepts a new little things in the house?
EP (Ellen Pompeo): Well, she liked her at first, and then

She was : “ Is she leaving?”
And I was, like, “No, no, she’s gonna live here.”
And she was like, “Oh. Okay”
It is apparently that Ellen Pompeo speaks so much hedging devices “like” in this conversation. “Like” in this situation is used as hedge because it does not have a syntactic function. The sentence can work fine without “like”; however, hedge here is insecurity marker. When she tells “You know, after, like, 3 months”, the hedge “like” expresses that she is uncertain about the time period. Moreover, she talks: “ I was, like: “ No, no, she’s gonna live here”” and “she was, like “oh.okay””, “like” means that she unsure about exactly words which she and her daughter said.
Similarly, in the circumstance of the dialogue between Benedict Cumberbatch and Ellen DeGeneres, “like” is also the hedge with the same function:
ED: You have major fans.
What do they call themselves, your fans?
BC ( Bennedict Cumberbatch): They call themselves a lot of things.
ED: But mainly?
BC: One, the Cumberbitches
ED: Cumberbitches?
BC: yeah, yeah. It’s like ….got to squeeze a confession out of me to actually say that word, cause I, kind of squirm a little bit

Benedict Cumberbatch tries to find an appropriate word to express the suitable name for fans. This demonstrates that he betrays a struggle for the accuracy of the statement.
On the other hand, the affective function of “sort of” is frequently evinced by women. Holmes (1984) proved that the primary function of “sort of” is to mark the intimacy. She explained that this function helps reduce the social distance and is also a face protecting device of the speaker as well as the addressee. It is the type of the positive effect including the positive and negative politeness. Looking at the following example, the speaker is a woman Ellen Pompeo who is talking about her spoilers as the proof for that:
ED: The fact that you even have them ahead of time
EP: No, I mean, she’s pretty protective about… I don’t think our spoilers are as sort of big as “Scandal” spoilers.
ED: Yeah
Obviously, Ellen Pompeo use “sort of” to reveal the positive self-evaluation. She thought that her spoilers are not much as “Scandal’s spoilers”. She used hedge to appeal to the listener for the sympathy and soften the general effect of the speech act which was as