MITIGATION AND HEDGING IN IKA THEN AND NOW

This project examined the, Mitigation and Hedging in Ika, then and now. Ika is spoken in Agbor, located in the southern part of Nigeria, Delta state. It can also be included as a local language study, in various academic institutions in Agbor, Delta state. The native speakers of the Ika reside in Agbor, Delta state, and are also fluent in Standard English. The Objective of the study is to know how mitigation and hedging is used, and how it is important in Ika. Mitigation has to do with lessening the gravity of an offence or a mistake. It is important to mitigate during a conversation, especially when talking to older people, so it does not look offensive to him/her. Hedging is a type of Mitigation that makes communication polite and successful. The theoretical framework used in this research study was that of Ethnography of community. This theory was able to analyze the communication within the sociocultural setting of Ika community. The SPEAKING model was employed to analyze the speech event within the Ika cultural context. The method of data collection used, to collect and analyze the data for this research work was, Qualitative method of data collection, as it involves interviews, audios, and video recordings. This was collected from competent/native speakers of Ika. The method of data analysis was the use of SPEAKING model from Ethnography of communication, which was proposed by Dell Hymes in 1962. The major findings of this work are, the researcher was able to know how Ika speakers mitigated and hedge then and now, and also the importance of mitigation and hedging in Ika. The researcher recommends that, the competent speakers and aged ones should make out time to school the younger, and non-competent speakers of Ika, to be causious of the use of offensive words in the community. By so doing, it will curb the use of unpleasant or unfavorable words.