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...

Insubordinate clauses present a challenge for grammatical analysis. This is owed to their unusual combination of subordinate structure with main clause use. This volume brings together a collection of articles on the form and function of insubordination in a range of languages – providing an up-to-date overview of current research on the topic.

Insubordinate clauses present a challenge for grammatical analysis. This is owed to their unusual combination of subordinate structure with main clause use. This volume brings together a collection of articles on the form and function of insubordination in a range of languages – providing an up-to-date overview of current research on the topic.

Discourse markers constitute an important part of linguistic communication, and research on this phenomenon has been a thriving field of study over the past three decades. However, a problem that has plagued this research is that these markers exhibit a number of structural characteristics that are hard to interpret based on existing methodologies, such as grammaticalization. This study argues that it is possible to explain such characteristics in a meaningful way. It presents a cross-linguistic survey of the development of discourse markers, their important role in communication, and their...