Gender and Hedging: Translatability of Difference in Agatha Christie's Third Girl

Abstract

As a linguistic tool, hedging has been examined by logicians and scholars to explore the vagueness and imprecision it creates in discourse. Generally, men are said to be more accurate, precise, assertive and confident in their use of language, while women tend to lack confidence and as such hedge more. Further, women hedge for socio-emotional functions, while men use hedging, when they do, for epistemic functions. This debate notwithstanding, hedging may be a problematic issue in translation due to its ambiguity. Translators often adopt literal translation to maintain the stylistic form of hedging neglecting along the way the communicative value that highlights the difference created by gender in hedging. The aim of this thesis, therefore, is to investigate these hypotheses by assessing the translator's amendments to achieve the desired effect intended by hedging in the source text. The thesis examines how hedges were handled in the Arabic translation by Al-ajyal publishers (2005) of Agatha Christie's Third Girl (1966). The thesis concludes that women, perhaps contrary to received wisdom, are more assertive, yet facilitative in their communication and use few hedges. Yet, the translation adopts literal translation and deletion as the most frequent strategies in rendering hedges. Literal translation is not the best strategy to preserve the epistemic functions of hedges. Also, it fails to maintain the socio-emotional functions. It would ruin the intended meaning the author intended in the source text.