HEDGES USED IN DEBATE BETWEEN ELON MUSK AND JACK MA ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

In reporting and explaining the result of a research, a researcher often uses hedges in their report. Hedges are words or phrases such as perhaps, may, can, and other words related to the degree of probability. Hedges as words or phrases make things fuzzy or less fuzzy and imply that the writers less committed to the certainty of referential information presented in their writings (Lakoff,1973). Hedges can also be found in the form of utterance. Most of well-known people in the world use hedges when delivering their ideas in order to minimize “threat-of-face” which hides beneath every act of communication. One of the example occurs in the debate between Elon Musk and Jack Ma in 2019 when they talked about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in many aspects of life. This research aims: (1) to identify the linguistics features of hedges occurs in the debate between Elon Musk and Jack Ma; and (2) to identify the function of hedges in the debate between Elon Musk and Jack Ma. The data used in this research was taken from the debate about Artificial Intelligence between Elon Musk and Jack Ma which collected by using documentation. This research method is using descriptive qualitative. It is found that most of the hedges used in the debate are in the form of modal auxiliary verbs as an effort to make the speakers less committed to the certainty of their statements, to safe them from ‘threat to face”, and to apply politeness.