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Hedging is an essential part of everyday communication. It is a discourse strategy which is used to reduce commitment to the force or truth of an utterance to achieve an appropriate pragmatic effect. In recent years hedges have therefore attracted increased attention in Pragmatics and Applied Linguistics, with studies approaching the concept of hedging from various perspectives, such as speech act - and politeness theory, genre-specific investigations, interactional pragmatics, and studies of vague language. The present volume provides an up-to-date overview of current research on the topic by bringing together studies from a variety of fields. The contributions span a range of different languages, investigate the use of hedges in different communicative settings and text types, and consider all levels of linguistic analysis from prosody to morphology, syntax and semantics. What unites the different studies in this volume is a corpus-based approach, in which various theoretical concepts and categories are applied to, and tested against, actual language data. This allows for patterns of use to be uncovered which have previously gone unnoticed and provides valuable insights for the adjustment and fine-tuning of existing categories. The usage-based approach of the investigations therefore offers new theoretical and descriptive perspectives on the context-dependent nature and multifunctionality of hedges.

Hedge (Linguistics) --- Euphemism --- Pragmatics --- Euphemism. --- Pragmatics. --- Pragmalinguistics --- Hedging (Linguistics) --- General semantics --- Language and languages --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Figures of speech --- Semantics --- Linguistics --- Philosophy --- E-books --- Hedge (Linguistics) - Congresses --- Euphemism - Congresses --- Pragmatics - Congresses

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Relevance drives our actions and channels our attention; it shapes how we make sense of the world and communicate with each other. Irrelevance spreads a twilight which blurs the line between information we do not want to access and information we cannot access. In disciplines as diverse as philosophy, sociology, the information sciences and linguistics, "relevance" has been proposed as a key concept. This book is the first to bring together the often unrelated traditions. Researchers from different fields discuss relevance and relate it to the challenges of "irrelevance", which have so far been neglected despite their significance for our chances of making well-informed decisions and understanding others. The contributions focus on theoretical and conceptual questions, on specific factors and fields, and on practical and political implications of relevance and irrelevance as forces which are even stronger when they remain in the background.

Relevance. --- Pragmatics. --- Pragmalinguistics --- General semantics --- Language and languages --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Pertinence --- Relevancy --- Meaning (Philosophy) --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Philosophy --- Relevance --- Pragmatics --- E-books --- Lexicology. Semantics --- Philosophy of language --- Cognitive Science. --- Communication. --- Phenomenology. --- Relevance Theory. --- Social Theory.