Hedging as a means of implementing interpersonal interaction in Russian-language political television interviews

The subject of this study is hedging in the genre of televised interviews within the Russian political discourse. The aim of the article is to identify the semantic and functional features and linguistic means of hedging used by politicians during interviews. Political discourse is characterized by semantic uncertainty, which, from a pragmatic perspective, is related to hedging. Hedging is generally understood as one of the strategies of politeness and is widely used in Russian-language political media communication, particularly in the genre of interviews. A political interview creates a dynamic dialogical space within the socio-political context, where the politician's utterances are the focus. They directly influence the interaction between the interview participants and the construction and interpretation of the entire discourse. Analyzing the use of hedges in this process will allow for a more precise characterization of the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of political discourse. The research was conducted based on television interviews with Russian politicians from 2021 to 2025, with a total duration of 11 hours and 37 minutes, using semantic, contextual, and qualitative-quantitative analysis methods. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the study of the implementation of hedging in political discourse from the perspective of interpersonal interaction. In accordance with the classification by E. Prince and his colleagues, common hedges in politicians' utterances are divided into four groups: hedge-adapters, hedge-rounders, plausibility hedges, and attributive hedges, followed by a statistical analysis of their verbal means of realization. The research found that a higher frequency is observed in hedge-rounders and plausibility hedges, followed by attributive hedges, while hedge-adapters occur least frequently. The author concludes that hedges demonstrate pragmatic potential in facilitating interpersonal interaction in political televised interviews, such as reducing the illocutionary force of the politician's utterances, building a harmonious dialogue between the politician, the interviewer, and the mass audience, as well as maintaining verbal and mental interaction during the interview process.