A Comparative Study Of Hedging In Chinese And English Academic Book Reviews-An Adaptation Approach

This thesis is intended to provide a comparative analysis of hedging in both Chinese and English academic book reviews (hereinafter referred to as CABRs and EABRs). Based on Hyland's taxonomy framework for hedging, the present study attempts to resort to Verschueren's adaptation theory (2000) as the conceptual framework so as to delve into the underlying reasons for the similarities and differences of using hedging between CABRs and EABRs, and thus reveals the dynamic process of adaptability of hedging in the two corpora.Descriptive and qualitative approaches are combined in the study. The descriptive approach is used to count the frequencies of hedges, providing evidence for the later analysis of similarities and differences. The qualitative approach is used to identify the major linguistic realizations, exploring the underlying reasons for the similarities and differences.The corpus of the study consists of 60 book reviews. The corpus in English is made up of 30 book reviews (approximately 43,317 words) selected randomly from six English leading linguistic journals in 2005 and 2006; likewise 30 Chinese book reviews (approximately 106,438 words) are published in five Chinese leading linguistic journals (which are the source journals of CSSCI) in 2005 and in 2006.After a detailed analysis of data collection, it is found that there are mainly four categories of hedges used in both corpora. Both similarities and differences in the use of hedges between the two corpora are found out. The first similarity lies in that both corpora are found out to have similar linguistic realizations of hedges, and the second similarity is that both corpora prefer accuracy-oriented hedges to other hedges. The first difference is that Chinese reviewers adopted much fewer hedges in their writings compared with their native English peers did in English book reviews. The second difference lies in the distribution of the 4 categories of the total hedges between CABRs and EABRs, i.e. Chinese book reviewers tend to employ higher frequencies of reviewer-oriented hedges but lower frequencies of reader-oriented hedges compared to English book reviewers.It is further demonstrated that hedging is actually a product of reviewers' linguistic choice stemming from the dynamic inter-adaptation between the linguistic forms and their contextual correlates. Central to discussion are two worlds from the communicative context, which constrains reviewers' choice-making of hedging, namely, the social world and the mental world. To be more specific, it is the different value systems, the different interpersonal relationships and research environments that the reviewers have to adapt to and different motivations for writing a book review that the reviewers have exerted a significant impact on the production of hedges.The significance of the thesis lies in two aspects. First, it attempts to adopt a comparative analysis of hedging in CABRs and EABRs, which may facilitate our understanding of the genre of book reviews in the two languages. Second, it will help achieve effective academic communication and contribute to writing academic book reviews in the two languages and thus promote the academic prosperity and academic communication between China and Western countries.