Introduction to hedging
Having read nearly all of Kingsley Amis’s novels, I have become increasingly interested in his peculiar ways with the English language. Many of his sentences and paragraphs feel long-winded – simultaneously over-embroiled and disconcertingly vague and gaseous. Only recently have I realised that the techniques he deploys so heavily have a formal name in linguistics, which is ‘hedging’.
‘Hedges’ are used to soften the impact of what we say or write. They are a feature of polite conversation in English i.e. conversation which is considerate of the other person. Hedges make what we say less direct, less confrontational. According to the Cambridge Online Dictionaries article on the subject, the most common forms of hedging include:
- the tense and aspect of verbs
- the use of modal expressions including modal verbs and adverbs
- the use of vague language such as ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’
- use of the passive voice
Credit
To be clear, my understanding of ‘Hedges’ is taken from the article on ‘Hedges’ on the Cambridge Dictionaries Online English Grammar Today website. I then illustrate the types of hedges it lists with examples from Kingsley Amis’s 1992 novel, The Russian Girl.
Aspects of hedging
Tense and aspect
It is polite to add conditional verbs to verbs to wish/want/desire. For example, ‘I wondered if I could have a word with you?’ (less direct and more polite than ‘Could I have a word with you?’).
Both of these examples are in the past tense because it is also a feature of English to put verbs of wishing/wanting/desiring into the past, to soften them.
‘I wondered if I could have a word with you?’ is less direct and more polite than ‘Could I have a word with you?’ but both of them are notably softer than the same sentiment a) without the conditional verb b) in the present tense — ‘Can I have a word with you?’
Modal expressions
‘Modality’ refers to verbs or adverbs which help express a speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards the world. Modal words express certainty, possibility, willingness, obligation, necessity and ability – or, as in Kingsley Amis, their opposite. For example: The problem could be that there’s no petrol in the car. [Less direct than ‘There’s no petrol in the ****** car’]
Vague language
English is full of possibilities to use vague and diffuse language. Especially when speaking, people often add unnecessary tags, such as ‘about, kind of, sort of, and that kind of thing’. The most obvious reason to use them is when you’re not sure what to call something or how to refer to it; alternatively, you might want to be deliberately vague about a feeling or intention: ‘He sort of meant it.’
The most basic sort of vague language is created by adding any of a large number of logically unnecessary tags, such as ‘about, kind of, sort of, and that kind of thing’.
Her response told him beyond doubt there was something that interested her more than anything to do with class systems or drink, for the moment at any rate… Unlike others Richard could have named, she evidently sensed this or something of the kind. (p.120)
‘Er, excuse me,’ she sort of called as if accosting a stranger in some public place. (p.129)
Well, it’s not my kind of thing, in a sense… (p.90)
‘And you want to give her a hand with her petition and scheme and what-not?’ (p.91)
‘I hope at least you’ll agree to see her, Crispin.’ (p.92)
The following example demonstrates plain confusion and bewilderment, so often the mood of an Amis protagonist, in this case forty-something, married professor of Russian literature, Richard Vaisey:
He hurried towards the exit, or entrance, distracted only when he passed a stray group of four or five presumably horsy people drinking what was surely champagne. (p.193)
Firstly, Richard doesn’t know whether it’s the entrance or exit. Then he is distracted. The group of people is ‘stray’ i.e. connected to the main party but in an unclear way. Does it consist of four or five people? It would only take a moment to determine but Amis deliberately doesn’t. Then ‘presumably’ and ‘surely’. That’s six hedges or indeterminables in just one sentence, six out of 27 words.
Vague language reflects vague and blurred perceptions. In the thriller writing tradition, especially the American one, the protagonist always knows the brand and make of everything from cars to guns to jewellery. Amis is the extreme opposite, never knowing any brand or make, barely able to manage colours, pointing in the general direction and saying sort of, and suchlike and what-have-you.
She was wearing a long-sleeved orange-yellow garment with a loose belt of the same material and all told no general description or certain provenance. (p.99)
Verbs
Some verbs (such as feel, suppose, reckon) can be used to hedge personal statements, that is, to make personal statements less direct: ‘We feel he should let them decide whether to buy the flat’ is less direct than ‘He should let them decide…’
Stance adverbs
Stance adverbs express opinions (perhaps, apparently, maybe), evaluations (sadly, unfortunately, happily) or the circumstances under which a clause is being spoken or written (frankly, briefly, confidentially). The stance adverb is a loosely-related, add-on comment about the content of the entire clause. Amis is particularly fond of conditional stance adverbs: ‘Perhaps’, ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’, ‘probably’, which all help to diffuse sentences, increase uncertainty. Example sentences from Amis:
- Cordelia replaced her telephone, which perhaps recalled a model of 1950… Indeed she was perhaps lucky to have caught him… (p.114)
- She had spoken with more animation than just now and he began to wonder if she had perhaps taken a quick nip or so… (p.119)
- So perhaps on the whole not. (p.141)
- She was sitting up in bed wearing a woolly garment that was probably a bed-jacket. (p.140)
Fine discriminations
It is at first sight a paradox that someone so addicted to vagueness as Amis is, spends so much time making fine discriminations between things, but less so on examination. It is an upper-class English trait to say something is ‘just a bit too…’, or ‘a little under…’, ‘just a fraction more…’, or ‘a shade under…’ These posh phrases which demonstrate how knowledgeable you are and what fine judgement you have, especially on the ever-boring but ever-snobbish subject of food and drink.
Like Anna, Richard chose the lemonade, which was slightly undersweetened in a refined way.’ (p.170)
This sentence is designed to tell you lots about the host, Russian émigré Kotolynov, but also about Richard, whose consciousness we are sort of sharing, showing that he appreciates the subtlety and fineness of the home-made lemonade. And tell you about the author, who spends so much effort defining these precise discriminations. And, at the end of the chain, says something about us readers, who for a few seconds are flattered into thinking that we also share the same super-civilised palate.
‘I’ve booked you in for one o’clock. Avoid the house claret, but the red burgundy is really quite good.’ (p.172)
Not good. Not quite good. Really quite good. The speaker is saying, See how civilised I am! In the event:
The set lunch at the Cor Anglais turned out to be rather better than passable. (p.174)
These apparently fine distinctions don’t contradict the earlier statement about vagueness because they are in fact meaningless. They are discriminations which are invisible to anybody else. They are to all intents and purposes made up. You can say of any drink whatsoever that ‘It is a shade less unappealing than I feared it might possibly be’ and sound frightfully knowledgeable. But the same person, when called on to name the colour of a dress or the make of phone, something real in the objective real world, turns out to be hopelessly at sea. Like Amis’s characters. Like Amis’s prose.
Unnecessary distinctions
Then or later, but mostly later, Richard read [the introduction to the book]. (p.172)
‘Don’t you actually like any of it?’ Richard had asked then or later. (p.94)
No sentence, no phrase is too short for Amis not to squeeze in some unnecessary distinction, to distinguish between two scintillas of meaning. Sometimes they actually mean something and suggest a real, if marginal, differentiation – but sometimes they feel like he’s done it because, well, it’s what he does, because it has become a mannerism.
Talking made Richard feel drunk again, or perhaps more precisely, for the first time. (p.190)
‘Yes, negative reasons chiefly, or entirely really.’ (p.191)
Kotolynov was… asking Anna rather less than inquisitively. (p.164)… said Kotloynov, bringing out a nearly fresh packet of camels… (p.165) But the glance he sent Richard, furtive and humorous, suggested that his last statement, at least, was not quite true. (p.170)
[Anna was wearing] a dark high-necked jacket that only just possibly might have come from the market near Professor Léon’s house. (p.258)
Maybe in Amis’s early novels, this mannerism had been comic, a form of comic exaggeration. Maybe some readers still find it comic. Maybe I’m missing the point, the intention.
When Anna reappeared she was looking much better and smelling like a not very distant pine-forest. (p.258)
Ors
Fine, almost invisible and often unnecessary, distinctions overlap with the related strategy of giving up and just plonking down a bunch of alternatives next to each other and letting the reader choose. Or decide. Or make their mind up. Or something.
‘How would it be if we went and picked her up from her hotel or safe house or whatever it is?’ (p.93)
‘Well you’ve earned a drink. Or ought to have one. Or you need one.’ (p.192)
Richard prepared himself for the odd remark about how similar or dissimilar this or that was to one Russian matter or another. (p.259)
It’s not just the narrator: all the characters without exception also use these multiple ‘ors’ whenever they can. It isn’t a calculated tactic, it is a basic way Amis thinks and writes.
‘I was afraid of what I might say to make your situation bad or worse than it was or need have been.’ (p.259)
Conclusions
Kingsley Amis was a champion hedger. It is a rare Amis sentence which doesn’t contain at least one hedge, generally more. Why?
Is hedging used to be polite… or rude?
The Cambridge article on ‘Hedging’ emphasises that hedging is generally used out of politeness, to soften communication between civilised people, to make human interaction gentler and more humane. In some situations, Amis’s characters do use hedging language for this purpose, and the novels record upper-middle-class English good manners. But routinely this shades off into subtler purposes: sometimes hedging language is used to imply the opposite, that a character is being rude beneath multiple layers of ostensible politeness. Or, further beyond this, that hedging is obviously going on, but it is unclear exactly what its purpose is.
Subtle discriminations… or no discriminations
Another definable purpose of Amis’s hedging language is to suggest a sort of fine discrimination, acute observation of what is taking place. In some sentences he displays very close observation of his characters’ gestures, tones of voice, mannerisms, tweaks and twitches. Hedging can be used to add to this effect, to augment it, giving you the impression the author is alert to even the tiniest disparities, the finest discriminations, noticing the precise type of this, that or the other behaviour.
And yet, paradoxically, such extensive hedging can also suggest the precise opposite: a bloody-minded ‘so what’, ‘who cares’ attitude, an attitude the narrator conveys throughout, of being at odds with the modern world, modern life, London, women, music, art ‘and all the rest of it’.
Amis novels, and most of his characters, are full of this dismissive attitude, they use hedging language because they can’t be bothered to be precise about things which are so obviously beneath their notice, so obviously unworthy of attention in the first place, so obviously crappy.
Does hedging suggest inebriation?
Another interpretation arises naturally from the scene two-thirds of the way through The Russian Girl where the protagonist, Richard Vaizey, gets very drunk. One of the ways we know this is because the hedges, the pointless alternatives, the vagueness of phraseology, all increase sharply.
This passage suggests that hedging is associated with being drunk. In which case, does the ubiquity of hedging throughout Amis’s works reflect the permanent light-headed detachment from reality of an alcoholic? Perceiving some things with preternatural clarity, other things a complete blur. And if so, could this be taken to reflect Amis’s own, permanently slightly pissed take on the world?
Or is it pure mannerism?
Finally, heading is so ubiquitous throughout Amis’s texts, both in the dialogue of the characters and the voice of the narrator, that sometimes it seems to have no purpose at all, but to have become a mannerism. He adds ‘perhaps’ to a sentence because it makes it more interesting, because it forces the reader to pause an extra second trying to decide if it adds any extra information, if this one quaver in the music changes its meaning. And when it happens at least once in paragraph after paragraph, you’d be forgiven for beginning to feel the entire text has a provisional, slightly arbitrary feel.
And is this the real, deep meaning of all the hedging: that Amis himself feels novels, writing, fiction are themselves not entirely serious – to quote his lifelong buddy, Philip Larkin, that ‘Books are a load of crap.’
Is all the hedging not only the narrator distancing himself from his characters and situations but Amis distancing himself from the entire activity of being a writer?
‘Here’s another novel, chaps, see what you make of it, quite a funny one this time, should earn me a few shekels, who’s for a top-up?’
Credit
The Russian Girl by Kingsley Amis was published by Hutchinson in 1992. Page references are to the 1993 Penguin paperback edition. All quotations are used for the purpose of criticism and review.
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