We can say that traditional approaches have construed these resources as either being concerned with the speaker's commitment to the truth-value of their utterances or with allowing the speaker to characterise their utterances as less than factual or as less than certain `knowledge', as having a diminished epistemic reliability. Thus Lyons contrasts what he terms the `subjectivity' of the modal meaning with the `objectivity' of `bare assertions' and describes such modalised utterances as `non-factive', in contrast to these `factive' utterances which are `straightforward statements of fact [which] may be described as "epistemically non-modal" because the speaker commits himself to the truth of what he asserts' (1977: 794). In a somewhat similar vein, Chafe observes,
People are aware, though not necessarily consciously aware, that some things they know are surer bets for being truer than others, that not all knowledge is equally reliable. Thus one way in which knowledge may be qualified is with an expression indicating the speaker's assessment of its degree of reliability. (Chafe 1986: 264)
Under these formulations, therefore, the semantics at issue is represented as emerging from meaning making in which individual speakers apply a `subjective' coloration or slant to the propositional content of their utterances so as to hedge the truth value of that content or to indicate doubts about its reliability. The semantics are construed as turning on whether individual speakers present themselves as willing or unwilling to commit to the truth of what they assert. Frequently the choice is construed as one between objective `facts' and the subjective uncertainty of the modal or the evidential value _ hence Lyons contrast between `non-factive' and tellingly what he terms the `straightforward statements of fact' (Lyons 1977: 794, emphases mine).
There is an implication, therefore, in the various formulations that the overriding purpose of communication is to exchange truth values or certain knowledge and that these modal, evidential or hedging values are introduced only in communicatively non-optimal circumstances. Thus the speaker is represented as inserting modal values and hence adopting an interpersonal position when they have failed to achieve an absolute, and hence `straightforward' (following Lyon's citation above), commitment to the truth of their utterances. These are thus values to be used, so to speak, when facts fail you. The term `hedge', I believe, reflects this perspective, suggesting as it does some form of evasion or even deceit, some sense of improperly `having it both ways' .
Such approaches are also informed by a view of communication in which either speaker or speaker and listener are constructed in individualised terms, rather than as social subjects dealing with meanings informed by and reflecting social structures and conditions. Thus the presence of the modal/evidential/hedging value is seen primarily to reflect the speaker's individual state of mind - speakers insert a modal qualification, for example, as a way of signalling their uncertainty, as a way of coding their individual lack of commitment to some propositional content.
