Hedges In Journalistic English And Their Reader-friendly Translation From The Perspective Of Dynamic Context

This thesis is devoted to studies on hedge demonstrations in journalistic English and their reader-friendly translation strategies. The theory of Fuzzy Set put forward by Zadeh inflicted a hard blow on the classical two-valued logic theory and awoke the long-deserted studies on fuzziness. The introduction of fuzziness to linguistics unfolded a new picture, hence the birth of a new discipline, fuzzy linguistics. Hedges coined by the linguist, Lakoff, as one member of fuzzy linguistics, have always been a scholarly concern in the past decades. Very little ink, however, has been spilled over hedge translation studies. As the globalization process is progressing and international communication is increasing, journalistic English translation, more than ever, deserves to be studied. Under such backgrounds, this thesis analyzes hedge demonstrations in journalistic English, and further explores their reader-friendly translation strategies.This thesis defines hedges in a somewhat open fashion. The analysis of hedge demonstrations is conducted from the quantitative and qualitative approaches respectively. Preciseness is so influential in journalistic writing that fuzziness has long been seen as something to be avoided. Facts speak louder than words. Quoted from a multitude of authoritative sources of journalistic English, this thesis convincingly shows that hedges take up a high percentage in journalistic English. Since this thesis is not a pure linguistic study, the quantitative analysis does not dive deeper into the demonstrations of different types of hedges. Rather, a qualitative analysis is conducted, suggesting that the appropriate employment of hedges in journalistic English is in accordance with the characteristics of journalistic writing. Therefore, hedges are integral components in journalistic English.However, this thesis is not confined to hedge analysis. Rather, the main thrust is to explore reader-friendly translation of hedges in journalistic English from the perspective of dynamic context theory. Reader-friendly translation is commonly used in journalistic translation. Context is dynamic in nature, which was not recognized at the beginning. Based on the relative literature review, this thesis produces a new model of dynamic context for journalistic translation. It is concluded that the theory of dynamic context is applicable in reader-friendly translation of hedges in journalistic English.This thesis wraps up with an appeal for more researches in this field, hoping to make some contributions both to hedge studies and to translation theory and practice.