I use qualifiers rarely in writing, and only when I wish to emphasize my own lack of confidence or conviction. I think I am even less likely to use them in speech.
There are some situations where altering your language to drive down overconfidence (or the opposite) seems to be a good idea—namely ones where you don’t want to trust your intuition or reasoning very much (or when you realize you are too epistemically humble). According to Sapir-Whorf, intentionally injecting or excluding qualifiers in a statement can change a speaker’s/listener’s/reader’s perceived level of confidence in the statement, as you alluded to in your question.
Addendum:
Politicians (much like many smarter-than-average children) like to use qualifiers so they don’t have to commit to anything, or so that two sides of a debate can each interpret their statement to map a candidate onto their side. Take this slightly exaggerated example where, I started with “X is happening” and inserted three qualifying fluffs (“as it has been presented” vs first-person observation, “seems to” vs definitely, “look like” vs some form of “to be”):
“The situation as it has been presented to me seems to look like X”—Candidate
If you believe in X, the candidate confirmed that they also believe in X, so you can support them. If you believe in Not X, but you wanted to support the candidate anyway, this formulation allows you to tell yourself that they:
don’t really strongly believe in X; or,
maybe they will change their mind once they are in office/have all of the facts/etc.; or,
they really believe in Not X but they have to try to win an election so they need to give off the impression that they support X to not piss off special interests/the party elite/primary voters/etc.
The third option in particular tends to be transparent mental gymnastics to anyone else but the believer. It’s a way to resolve or bury cognitive dissonance created when someone supports a candidate they don’t 100% agree with.
I use qualifiers rarely in writing, and only when I wish to emphasize my own lack of confidence or conviction. I think I am even less likely to use them in speech.
There are some situations where altering your language to drive down overconfidence (or the opposite) seems to be a good idea—namely ones where you don’t want to trust your intuition or reasoning very much (or when you realize you are too epistemically humble). According to Sapir-Whorf, intentionally injecting or excluding qualifiers in a statement can change a speaker’s/listener’s/reader’s perceived level of confidence in the statement, as you alluded to in your question.
Addendum:
Politicians (much like many smarter-than-average children) like to use qualifiers so they don’t have to commit to anything, or so that two sides of a debate can each interpret their statement to map a candidate onto their side. Take this slightly exaggerated example where, I started with “X is happening” and inserted three qualifying fluffs (“as it has been presented” vs first-person observation, “seems to” vs definitely, “look like” vs some form of “to be”):
If you believe in X, the candidate confirmed that they also believe in X, so you can support them. If you believe in Not X, but you wanted to support the candidate anyway, this formulation allows you to tell yourself that they:
don’t really strongly believe in X; or,
maybe they will change their mind once they are in office/have all of the facts/etc.; or,
they really believe in Not X but they have to try to win an election so they need to give off the impression that they support X to not piss off special interests/the party elite/primary voters/etc.
The third option in particular tends to be transparent mental gymnastics to anyone else but the believer. It’s a way to resolve or bury cognitive dissonance created when someone supports a candidate they don’t 100% agree with.