ABSTRACT
This research studies the use of hedging in the movie entitled Dear John. It was conducted to find out the types of the hedging in relation to Fraser’s theory and the functions of hedging employed by the main characters
This research uses Pragmatics approach. It is a qualitative descriptive research which took purposive sampling technique. The data are all dialogs containing hedging which have significant relationship with the problem statements. There are 25 data which were found in the movie. Then, the data were classified by using Fraser’s theory of hedging. The researcher looked for hedging that has the function as softener.
The result of the analysis shows that there were two types of hedging employed by the main characters in the movie. They were propositional (7 data) and speech act hedging (18 data). Hedging that were found in the movie had seven functions as softener. First, hedging made a claim become soft. This function was mostly found in the movie among the others (8 data). Second, hedging also made a comment become soft (5 data). Third, hedging could make a request become soft too (4 data). Fourth, hedging had the other functions which were also found in the movie, that was as softener of performative (3 data). Fifth, hedging also created a criticism became soft (2 data). Sixth, a complaint became soft because of hedging (2 data). Last, hedging made a command sound soft (1 data).