Negotiating Caution in a Bilingual Setting: A Comparative Study of Hedging in Essays by French-Speaking and English-Speaking Students in Cameroon

Abstract

This study investigates the use of hedging devices in the essays of French-speaking and English-speaking students at Government Bilingual High School Yaoundé, Cameroon. In a sociolinguistic landscape characterised by official bilingualism, this research examines how linguistic and educational backgrounds influence the pragmatic expression of tentativeness, politeness, and epistemic caution in student writing. Drawing on theories of genre, corpus linguistics, and hedging taxonomies, the study combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse student essays from both sub-systems. Key findings reveal that while both groups employ a range of hedging strategies, their preferences and frequency differ significantly. English-speaking students exhibit a wider range of epistemic markers and discourse-level hedges, whereas French-speaking students favour modal constructions and approximators. The study attributes these differences to linguistic transfer and rhetorical conventions inherited from each linguistic tradition. The research contributes to our understanding of hedging in multilingual academic contexts and offers pedagogical recommendations to improve metadiscursive awareness and writing proficiency. In doing so, it highlights the intersection of language, identity, and educational policy in shaping student discourse in Cameroon.