Hedges And Boosters Used By Becky Kennedy In The Ted Talk

This research analyzes Becky Kennedy's use of hedges and boosters in the TEDTalk "The Single Most Important Parenting Strategy." The aim is to describe thetypes of hedges and boosters used by Kennedy and determine the most frequentlyoccurring categories. A qualitative descriptive method was used with datacollection through visual perception of the talk show. The steps of data collectionincluded: 1) searching for and downloading the TED Talk and its transcript, 2)watching the talk show repeatedly, 3) converting the Word document into Txtformat, and 3) importing the transcript into AntConc.exe. The analysis techniqueused was content analysis using the following steps: 1) examining the textcontaining the words hedges and boosters, 2) classifying the types of hedges andboosters, 3) presenting the data in tables, 4) analyzing using Hyland's (1998) theory,5) drawing conclusions. The results showed that Kennedy tended to use words inthe modal verb category in hedges and boosters and indicated the dominance ofKennedy's use of modal verbs in strengthening or doubting his arguments in thespeech.