A Contrastive Study Of Hedges In English And Chinese

As a part of fuzzy language, hedges are common in human language and play animportant role in communication. In this paper, the author starts her research from thepoint of servicing Teaching of Chinese as the Second Language (TCSL), taking theinternational student enrollments as the research object, and attempted to explore thepragmatic functions of hedges in order to make good use of them in languageteaching and communication. This paper first elaborates the important strategicsignificance of TCSL to develop China’s soft power and shape the country’sinternational image, at the same time, gives a brief introduction to the generaldevelopment of the hedges research at home and abroad. In recent years, greatsuccess has been achieved in domestic study of fuzzy linguistics since1979, however,much of research is restricted to the fuzzy semantics and lacks of the study in fuzzylanguage application. The researchers have realized the important role that hedgesplay in daily life communication. Meanwhile, its particularity and significance indiscourse haven’t been fully attached importance to, especially during the process ofTCSL. This paper compares and analysizes the hedges’ types and pragmatic functionsboth in Chinese and English versions of publicity text—international studentsenrollments. The study will reinforce the fact that hedges are used as a very efficientdiscourse strategy. We should pay enough attention to the teaching of hedges and helpinternational students have a good command of the relevant knowledge of pragmaticsand of how to make use of it. It cannot deny that hedges contain particularly specificmeanings and abundant pragmatic functions that cannot be replaced by others. Theproper use of hedges not only helps achieve the aim of communication but also offersgood instruction in Chinese language teaching and Chinese language learning.