The Pragmatic Functions Of Hedges In Diplomatic Language

Fuzziness is one essential feature of languages and it exists widely in all aspects of human language. Hedges, as one important part of fuzzy language family, have drawn the attention of linguists from the beginning of 1960s. In 1972, G. Lakoff first introduced the concept of hedges in his article"Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts", defining them as"words whose functions are to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy". Since the 1970s, hedges have been studied from various angles and from almost every possible perspective and the concept of hedges began to move into pragmatic and discourse areas in the 1980s. This thesis tries to study hedges in diplomatic language from pragmatic perspective.As a natural phenomenon, hedges exist widely in various fields, so do in diplomatic language. In this study, the use of"diplomacy"is confined to political diplomacy only.With the application of the Conversational Implicature, the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, this thesis analyzes hedges in diplomatic language based on the collected data and tries to find the features, realizations and functions of hedges in this particular language. The study finds that in diplomatic occasions, the appropriate use of hedging would contribute to the enhancement of language validity to a certain extent, instead of weakening the accuracy of political diplomatic language. Hedges in diplomatic language have functions such as performance of the politeness, reinforcement of the flexibility and self-protection.This study will help people become more aware of the strategies and functions of hedges in diplomatic language, so as to better interpret the implicature behind those hedges not only in diplomatic language but also in daily communications.