The Pragmatic Functions Of Hedges By Doctors In Doctor-patient Conversations

In 1972, Lakoff proposed the concept "hedge". Then from the 80's in 20th century up to now, researches concerning the hedges have gradually extended to the field of pragmatics. The doctor-patient conversation, as a kind of daily conversations, is another kind of significant and convenient corpus. Linguists from abroad have studied on the hedges in doctor-patient conversations for a long time, but in China, few of them have ever stepped into the application of the theories related to doctor-patient conversations. This thesis aims to investigate the application and analyze the pragmatic functions of the hedges by doctors in doctor-patient conversations through conversational implicature, cooperative principle and politeness principle.In the present study, the recordings of doctor-patient conversations were collected in some major hospitals in Chongqing. The thesis is composed of seven chapters:Chapter one is the introduction of the background, significance and organization of the study. Chapter two is the literature review, which presents the definitions, classifications and an overview of the study of hedges at home and abroad. Chapter three focuses on the theoretical basis on which this thesis will be built, introducing the doctor-patient conversations, revealing the relationships between the hedges and the conversational implicature. cooperative principle and the politeness principle respectively. Chapter four is the design of the present thesis, including research questions, data collection, procedure and the research methodology (qualitative methodology). Chapter five presents the pragmatic analysis of doctors'hedges in doctor-patient conversations from conversational implicature, cooperative principle and politeness principle. Chapter six analyzes the pragmatic functions of the hedges in doctor-patient conversations (achieving politeness, increasing credibility and enhancing self-protection). Chapter seven concludes the present study with its major findings, limitations and suggestions for further studies.This thesis also brings some enlightenments. First, investigating the hedges by doctors in doctor-patient conversations can further supplement and enrich the pragmatic theories and applications related. Second, the authentic data analyzed in this thesis will enlarge the corpus of the study on doctor-patient conversations, which shed light on how to improve the relationship between doctors and patients.