Diplomatic press releases play a significant role in presenting a nation’s position about global issues to the local and global communities. A nation’s stance and decisions communicated via press releases need to be mitigated and expressed tactfully and cautiously to avoid distress leading to confrontations. As a mitigating device, hedging has been identified as an effective pragmatic strategy in reducing potentially damaging reactions, therefore encouraging effective diplomatic communication. This paper presents a content analysis of 27 press releases on world crises by the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs between May 2020 and May 2022. The identification and coding of hedging items were completed manually by considering context and co-text using a framework of Identification Criteria of Hedging Devices. The identified hedges were analysed pragmatically to determine their functions in diplomatic communication. The analysis reveals that hedges in diplomatic press releases by the Ministry of foreign affairs serve several functions which highlight the influence of culture on diplomatic stance-taking. It should be noted that the absence of hedges in some of the press releases confirms various writing guidelines that the genre values factual, direct, and accurate information. These findings are beneficial for successful intercultural diplomatic communication and accordingly global peace.

Keywords: cross-cultural communication; diplomatic communication; hedging; press releases

Abdualhussein, M. & Chaqmaqchee, O. (2021). The Use of Lexical Hedges in Academic Writing. Asian Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 4(4), pp. 80-84. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355379439_The_Use_of_Lexical_Hedges_in_Academic_Writing

Ahmed, A.H., & Majeed, M.R. (2019). A Pragmatic Investigation of Hedging in Selected English and Kurdish Parliament Debates. Journal of Garmian University, 6(2), 290-296. https://doi.org/10.24271/garmian.196222

Al-Rashady, F. (2012). Determining the Role of Hedging Devices in the Political Discourse of Two American Presidentiables in 2008. TESOL Journal, 7, pp. 30-42. https://tesol-international-journal.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/V7_A3.pdf

Ashari, H., n.d. Diplomacy and Foreign Relations. [online] Available at:

Awang, S., Maros, M., & Ibrahim, N. (2012). Malay values in intercultural communication. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 2(3), 201.

Bojang, Alieu S.. (2018). The Study of Foreign Policy in International Relations. Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs, 06(04). https://doi.org/10.4172/2332-0761.1000337

Brown, P. and S. Levinson (1987). Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Buddhima Karunarathna, J. (2020). Improving the Use of Language Hedges in Academic Writing through Reading Journal Articles. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 11, 17-23. Department of Statistics Malaysia Official Portal. (2022, July 20). https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1_/

Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The Stance Triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction (pp. 139-182). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.164.07du

Fraser, B. (2010). Hedging in Political Discourse: The Bush 2007 Press Conferences. In Urszula Okulska and Piotr

Cap (Eds.), Perspectives in politics and discourse, pp. 201-214. Doi: 10.1075/dapsac.36.16fra

Gill, Sarjit & Talib, Ahmad & Jawan, Jayum. (2012, February). UNITY IN DIVERSITY: MALAYSIAN EXPERIENCE AND APPROACH [Paper presentation]. International Seminar on One ASEAN ONE Community: Political, Religious and Socio-Cultural Issues and Challenges At: Nakon Si Thamarat, Thailand.

Gyasi, W. K. (2017). Readability and political discourse: An analysis of press releases of Ghanaian political parties. Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 9(6), 42–50. doi.org/10.5897/JMCS2017.0574

Habeeb, S. (2019). Hedging Strategies and Politeness in the Political Interview. International Journal of Contemporary Applied Researches, 6(4), 131-147. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33931456

Hassan, A. & Muhamed Said, N.K. (2020). A Pragmatic Study of Hedging in American Political Editorials.

International Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 10 (III), 60-74. doi: 10.37648/ijrssh.v10i03.007

Hofstede Insights. (2021, June 21). Country comparison. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/countrycomparison/malaysia/

Hyland, K. (1996). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 433454.

Jacobs, G. (1999). Self-reference in press releases. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(2), 219-242. doi:10.1016/s03782166(98)00077-0

Khalil, H. H. (2020). A pragma-semantic model for ideology identification in political media discourse: An interdisciplinary methodology for the socio- cognitive approach. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 26(4), 28-44. http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2020-2604-03

Lakoff, G. (1972). ‘‘Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts’’, Papers from the Eighth

Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 183–228. Reprinted in Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1973, 2: 4, 458–508, and in D. Hockney et al. (eds.). Contemporary research in philosophical logic and linguistic semantics. Dodrecht: Fortis, 221–271.

Lassen, I. (2006). Is the press release a genre? A study of form and content. Discourse Studies, 8(4), 503–530. doi:10.1177/1461445606061875

Mahaseth, H. (2020). The role of Malaysia in ASEAN. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/10/28/the-role-of-malaysiain-asean/

Martin-Martin, P. (2008). The mitigation of scientific claims in research papers: A comparative study. International Journal of English Studies, 8(2), 133-152.

McLaren-Hankin, Y. (2008). “We expect to report on significant progress in our product pipeline in the coming year”: hedging forward-looking statements in corporate press releases. Discourse Studies, 10(5), 635–654. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24049395.

Minnis, J. H., & Pratt, C. B. (1995). Let's revisit the newsroom: What does a weekly newspaper print? Public Relations Quarterly, 90(3), 13–18.

Mitsuomi, I. (2015). The Path to Malaysia's Neutral Foreign Policy in the Tunku Era. SARJANA, 30(2), 71-79.

Mohd Noor, M. (2014a). Stance-taking: Hedging and the Features of Writer-Reader Relationship in EAL and EL1 Research [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Melbourne] Minerva Access. http://hdl.handle.net/11343/44224

Mohd Noor, M., Mulder, J., Thompson, C. (2014). A Context-Based Approach to the Identification of Hedging Devices and Features of Writer-Reader Relationship in Academic Publications. In: Łyda, A., Warchał, K. (eds) Occupying Niches: Interculturality, Cross-culturality and Aculturality in Academic Research. Second Language Learning

and Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02526-1_5

Moody, R. F. (2011). The press release: Do TV and newspaper editors see eye to eye?. Public Relations Journal, 5(2), 1-20. ISSN 1942-4604

Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 1–35. doi:10.1093/applin/10.1.1

Nair, D. (2019). Saving face in diplomacy: A political sociology of face-to-face interactions in the Association of

Southeast Asian Nations. European Journal of International Relations, 25(3), 672–697. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066118822117

National Security Policy. (2019). National Security Council. https://www.mkn.gov.my/web/wpcontent/uploads/sites/3/2019/08/English-National_Security_Policy.pdf

Pander Maat, H. (2007). How promotional language in press releases is dealt with by journalists: Genre mixing or genre conflict? Journal of Business Communication, 44(1), 59-95. doi:10.1177/0021943606295780

Prime Minister's Office of Malaysia. (2021, December 7). Focus In Continuity: A Framework For Malaysia’s Foreign Policy In A Post-Pandemic World. https://www.pmo.gov.my/2021/12/focus-in-continuity-a-framework-formalaysias-foreign-policy-in-a-post-pandemic-world/

Rabab'ah, Ghaleb & Rumman, Ronza. (2015). Hedging in Political Discourse: Evidence from the Speeches of King Abdullah II of Jordan. Prague Journal of English Studies. 4. 10.1515/pjes-2015-0009.

Richardson, C., Yaapar, M.S., and Amir, S. (2016) Budi and Malay workplace ethics. Journal of Asia Business Studies, 10(1): 78-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JABS-02-2015-0018

Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 13(2), 149-171.

Salager-Meyer, F. (1997). I think that perhaps you should: A study of hedges in written scientific discourse. In T. Miller (Ed.), Functional approaches to written text: Classroom applications. Washington D.C.: United States Information Agency.

Tarling, N. (2009). Malaysia and the Early Years of ZOPFAN. SARJANA, 24(1), 1-12.

Ustyantseva, A. E. (2019). Hedging in academic writing. Issues of Applied Linguistics, 35, 82-98. doi: https://doi.org/10.25076/vpl.35.05