A Comparative Study of Hedges and Boosters in English and Jordanian Arabic: Economic Newspaper Articles as a Case Study

Abstract

The study investigated English and Jordanian economic newspaper articles. It sheds light on the similarities and differences in terms of the frequencies and percentages of using hedges and boosters. To this end, the researcher selected 60 newspaper articles. 15 articles were randomly chosen from recent issues published in 2016-2017 in two English newspapers, "The New York Times" and "The Guardian". The study compared the frequencies of hedging and boosting devices in these newspapers to the frequencies of hedging and boosting devices in two Jordanian newspapers "Alrai" and "Alghad".The findings of the study revealed that language plays a role in using these devices. Significantly, English economic articles used modal auxiliaries and approximates most, while Arabic economic articles used approximates and lexical verbs most.