Abstrak

This research focuses on the analysis of hedging as negative politeness in the opinion columns of the Jakarta Post. This research aims to find out the types of hedges that are used as negative politeness strategy in the opinion columns of the Jakarta Post. Moreover, this research also aims to find the context background and the functions of hedges used in the opinion columns of the Jakarta Post. Then, this research aims to describe the use of hedges as negative politeness in in the opinion columns of the Jakarta Post. This research belongs to descriptive qualitative method since the data are collected of this research are words or sentences which belong to the hedging expression in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post newspaper.

Based on the analysis of this study, the result shows that there are two types of hedges that are used by the writers in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post, they are Content-oriented hedges and Reader-oriented hedges. The researcher also finds out there are four types of context background that are used in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post newspaper, they are physical context, psychological context, epistemic context and social context. Furthermore, there are six functions of the hedges used in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post. The functions are to avoid the imposition, to show tentativeness, to emphasize the definiteness/indefiniteness, to involve the reader, to dissociate from the text, and to give alternative. Last, all of hedges in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post newspaper especially on 27th  April 2019 and 25th  May 2019 are used as negative politeness strategy. The researcher proves that all of the hedges used in the opinion column of the Jakarta Post (on 27th April 2019 and 25th May 2019)
fulfill the requirements of negative politeness strategy.

Keywords: Pragmatics, Hedges, Negative Politeness.