Hedge and Booster in Newspaper Articles on Iran's Presidential Election: A Comparative Study of English and Persian Articles

Abstract

Hedges and boosters as meta-discourse markers have been the focus of many studies. There may be cross-cultural difference among the users of these markers. This comparative study intends to compare the use of these markers between two mass-circulation newspapers in Iran and the United States, Keyhan and Washington Post, respectively, about the Eleventh course of presidential election in Iran. To this end, articles of seven days before and seven days after the election of these two newspapers were gathered. Both textual and quantitative analyses were done by the researchers. One-way ANOVA was conducted to compare means of the use of hedges and boosters in these two newspapers. The findings of this corpus analysis showed that more boosters and more hedges were used by Keyhan and Washington Post respectively. It was also revealed by the finding that there is a significant relationship between Keyhan and Washington Post on the use of hedges and boosters before and after the election.