DISCOURSE ORGANIZATION AND HEDGES IN NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS IN PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

Newspaper editorial is a discourse that communicates information of immediate societal issues accompanied with the editorial writer’s opinion. These are conveyed by using hedges that mitigate their claims and protect them from making false statement. Hence, this study examined hedges found in the 42 newspaper editorials of the International Corpus of English in the Philippines (ICE PH), the journalistic nature hedges reveal, and the discourse organization of the newspaper editorial. Utilizing quantitative and textual analysis, this corpus based study found that modals and plausibility shields are f requently used as to form and function of hedges which is attributed to its wide range of meanings and reliability. The discourse organization revealed the consistent two move pattern employed in all the blocks and the obligatory and optional steps rendere d using the General Paper Essay Model of Ho. In addition are the blocks, moves and steps predominantly hedged. These findings as significant to English as Second Language (ESL) teachers and learners offer pedagogical implications as to incorporating hedges in written courses like Campus Journalism for it displays linguistic role that could further improve ESL learners’ writing skills.