Pragmatic Analysis Of Hedges In International Business Negotiation

Fuzzy language, like precise language, is an effective means for human beings to exchange and communicate ideas. As an important part of it, hedges have greatly contributed to the fuzziness of language. Both fuzzy language and hedges are the linguistic reflections of vagueness in the real world. Starting from 1970s, increasing attention has been paid to the study of hedges from the perspective of pragmatic function, instead of purely from the angle of semantic analysis. In accordance with pragmatic interpretation, hedges can be defined as certain expressions whose function is to modify the degree of vagueness of other words and expressions. With deepening study of hedges, the scope of the concept has gradually widened. Not only does it include adjectives and adverbs which"make things fuzzier and less fuzzy", but also modal words and expressions that indicate the speaker's attitude toward what he or she is saying.Since 1978, China has been integrated itself into the process of globalization. Being an important means of this integration, international business negotiation (IBN) has played an essential part in foreign trade and commercial competition. The significance of IBN has aroused the interests of many scholars in various fields, including plenty of analysis from linguistic point of view. Among which, the study of fuzziness in IBN is a hot issue. Based on previous endeavors, the thesis makes an attempt to narrow the topic down, examining the use and the function of hedges in IBN, for it is clear enough that hedges is the main reason for vagueness in language use. Based on Prince et al's classification and taking the cooperative principle and politeness principle as the general frame, the thesis probes into the pragmatic functions of hedges in IBN by the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from a mini-corpus.Compared with other commercial competing methods, IBN is attached to some distinctive features, such as interdependence of the stance, concealment/openness in tactics, and creativity in bargaining, etc. The thesis reveals that appropriate use of hedges in IBN can enhance the flexibility of the language and improve the felicity of wording, leading them to be more natural, polite and efficient. Since IBN, as a course, has been established in many tertiary institutions, the pragmatic analysis of hedges will exert its pedagogical significance upon students'learning process.