Hedges in Students’ Reflective Feedback: Evidence from an Online Class during COVID-19 Outbreak

Scholars have observed hedges in academic writing, yet the examination of hedges in students’ reflective feedback is scarcely found. During the Covid-19 pandemic, both teachers and students face difficulty engaging themselves in online classes. To figure out how students show their attitude, among others, is through reflective feedback. One of the language features pivotal in reflective feedback is ‘hedge’, a pragmatic feature representing a speaker’s tentativeness and possibility in communication (Lakoff, 1973). This paper addresses two questions: (1) what types of hedges are used in the students’ reflective feedback in online class during the covid-19 outbreak? and (2) what are the functions of the hedges? This paper took 151 samples of students’ reflective feedback in the introduction to English linguistics class at Sanata Dharma University to answer those problems. Findings reveal that the students dominantly used modal auxiliaries and epistemic adverbs as the types of hedges as a politeness technique to convey their anxiety and hesitation during an online class.Keywords: hedges, reflective feedback, online clas

The Function of Humor Applied in Margaret Chos Stand-Up Comedy: PsyCHO

This article discusses the function of humor in Margaret Cho's Stand-Up Comedy entitled PsyCHO. The aims of this research are to explain the humor function applied by Margaret Cho in creating humor situation in her stand-up comedy. The data in this research are oral data which is transcribed into written form. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method. According to the research in the stand-up comedy entitled PsyCHO, the researchers found that Margaret Cho tends to use humor function to create solidarity with the audiences. This is dominated by sharing strategy which is often conveyed by Cho in her stand-up comedy. Keywords: humor, stand-up comedy, pragmatics, joke

Analysis of Humor on Cartoon Comics "Be Like Bro": Pragmatics Study

This article aims to identify the types of violation of conversational maxims created by cartoon comic entitled “Be Like Bro” in the English version and also to describe how the humorous situation can be created from those violations. There are two findings in this research. First, those six data show that there is a violation of conversational maxims, which are the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relevance, and the maxim of manner. Those six data also show that the humorous situation is creating by incongruent meaning in the conversation and releasing the feeling. Keywords: humor, cooperative principles, context, pragmatic

The Function of Taboo Expressions in Nicki Minaj’s Song Lyrics

The societal phenomenon of taboo terms is commonly expressed in song lyrics. This research focuses on the function of taboo expressions in the song lyrics of Nicki Minaj, a singer who is known to use such expressions. The first objective of this analysis is to determine the types of taboo expressions found in Minaj’s songs. Secondly, the researchers examine the function of these expressions in the song lyrics. Four of Minaj's songs are presented in the data: "Superbass," "Megatron," "Barbie Tingz," and "Anaconda." This research employs descriptive and qualitative analysis, as well as the theoretical frameworks provided by Battistella (2005) and Wardhaugh (2021). The findings demonstrate that vulgarity is the most frequent form of taboo expression in Minaj's song lyrics, while the main function of these phrases is to attract attention. These songs indicate more than simply linguistic qualities; they also offer a thorough understanding of the social setting. This study fills a gap in the literature on taboo expressions in song lyrics by revealing the function and types of taboo expressions employed by a well-known singer. This research has the capacity to enlighten future research on the usage of taboo expressions in music, and the broader cultural consequences of such language implication