الفهرس 
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Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to investigate the effect of gender on the use of hedging in some selected TV interviews in Arabic and English. It also seeks to pinpoint the role of context of situation in determining the use of different types of hedging in discourse in general and the genre of TV interviews in particular. In the light of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory and with the application of a combination of hedging taxonomies, hedging devices in twenty TV interviews in Arabic and English are analyzed. By using the frequency count and percentage, hedging types and their frequency are extracted in the selected TV interviews under discussion. Findings show that women interviewees where English is the medium hedge their utterances a little bit higher than their men counterparts (e.g. women use hedges in almost 7.82%(see figure.21) while men use hedges in nearly 7.33%(see figure.22) whereas men interviewees where Arabic is the medium hedge their utterances a little bit higher than their women counterparts (e.g. men use hedges in almost 13%(see figure.24) while women use hedges in nearly 12.95%(see figure.23). These findings prove that hedging is not a typical feature of women language as it has been claimed by Lakoff R (1975) and also show that context is the pivotal indicator in determining the type and frequency of hedging in general and TV interviews in particular.
Key words
hedging - epistemic modality - indirectness – vagueness – evasion – equivocation – evidentially – boosters – gender – politeness – discourse markers-talk shows – TV interviews .