Lexical verb hedging in legal discourse: The case of law journal articles and Supreme Court majority and dissenting opinions

- Realization, frequency and function of lexical verb hedges are analyzed.
- Four categories of epistemic lexical verbs are examined.
- A corpus-based approach is used to compare the three genres.
- Differences are linked to communicative purposes associated with each genre.

Hedging can play a particularly important role in nuancing language in such language-dependent disciplines as law. This article presents a corpus-based study of the use of epistemic lexical verbs as hedging devices in three written legal genres: The law journal article, the Supreme Court majority opinion and the Supreme Court dissenting opinion. These genres were chosen due to the role they potentially play in international higher education law studies, with the corpus deriving from the legal jurisdiction of the United States. Realization, frequency and function of speculative, quotative, sensorial and deductive lexical verb hedges are compared. Results indicate that patterns of use of epistemic lexical verb hedges can be identified for each genre and can be linked to differing communicative purposes. The article concludes that better understanding of hedging use in different genres can enhance hedging competence, especially hedging interpretation skills.