This paper aims to examine hedging expressions expressed by epistemic modal auxiliaries and to analyze their grammatical function, intrinsic meaning and scope in English. Meaning difference in sentences merged with an epistemic modal auxiliary is revealed by the scope parameter between the unmarked and marked interpretation of it. At the C-I interface, the unmarked use of an epistemic modal auxiliary doesn't contribute to the truth-conditional meaning, whereas the marked use of it sometimes contributes to the truthconditional meaning. An epistemic modal auxiliary moves to C from T at the C-I interface, then it functions subjectively as a discourse-related information marker connoting an illocutionary force feature there. But when it functions objectively at T without movement, an epistemic modal auxiliary links thematic relation to its subject. In order to confirm the scope of epistemic modals, 20 native speakers checked the grammaticality of sentences that containing both an epistemic modal auxiliary and a quantifier concurrently. The result shows that all the native speakers interpret the epistemic modal auxiliary as denoting wide scope, but they don’t agree one another on the interpretation of it as denoting narrow scope.

‘공손성’은 화자가 청자를 얼마나 잘 배려하는가를 개념화한 말이다. 한국어에서 공손성은 문법적인 표지에서부터 담화 화용적 상황에서의 맥락적 차원으로까지 다양한 층위에서 드러난다. 본고에서는 한국어의 공손성의 하위영역의 하나인 완화표현이 실제 한국어 말하기 수업에서 어떠한 양상으로 나타나는지를 살펴보고, 완화표현에 대한 교수 · 학습의 필요성을 제고해 보고자 한다.