A Contrastive Study Of Hedges In English And Chinese News Reports

Hedges, as an important part of fuzzy language, have attracted the attention of scholars both at home and abroad in recent years. Researches on hedges have been carried out from different perspectives. News, as a means of mass communication, plays an important role in people's daily life. It provides people with all kinds of latest information and presents comments on recent events. It is universally acknowledged that the language used in news reports is required to be accurate, brief, and objective. However, these special requirements do not deny the existence of hedges in news reports. As a matter of fact, hedges can be widely used in news reports.The main concern of this thesis is to make a contrastive study on the use of hedges in English and Chinese news reports in the hope of finding out how hedges are used in English and Chinese news reports. To be specific, the present thesis aims to answer the following research questions: 1) What types of hedges are primarily employed in the English and Chinese news reports? 2) What are the similarities and differences in the use of hedges between English and Chinese news reports? 3) What are the pragmatic functions of hedges in English and Chinese news reports?The present study mainly provides a comprehensive account for the use of hedges in English and Chinese news reports on the basis of two mini self-compiled corpora, namely, the English News Reports Corpus (ENRC) and the Chinese News Reports Corpus (CNRC). Each corpus consists of 30 news items. All the 60 pieces of news items are selected from authoritative English and Chinese newspapers with the focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The time span of news items ranges from 14 July 2001 to 24 August 2008. In order to increase the comparability, the present study selects the English and Chinese news reports of the same events. The hedges in mini corpora are classified into four types according to Prince et al's taxonomy. The overall frequency and the percentage of each type are recorded. The frequency of each category in every news item is calculated and illustrated too. Meanwhile, a description of the major hedging expressions can be found in the thesis. The adaptability of hedges in communicative context is discussed within the theoretical framework of Adaptation Theory. The primary pragmatic functions of hedges in news reports are presented afterwards.The major findings of the statistical analysis are: 1) A variety of hedges are employed in both English and Chinese news reports; 2) All subtypes of hedges could be applied in English and Chinese news reports; 3) In terms of quantity, there are more hedges in English news reports than in Chinese news; 4) The favored category of hedges in two corpora is different. Thus, the present study draws a conclusion that hedges are an indispensable part of news reports. Hedges in news reports not only imply the news writer's stance and subjective attitude towards the topic, but also describe the event accurately and objectively.The present thesis consists of six sections. The first section serves as a brief introduction, including the research background, the research aims and the significance of the current study. The second section makes a general literature review relevant to the present study. It involves some important definitions and categorizations of key terms, and relevant studies conducted both at home and abroad. The third section demonstrates the theoretical framework for the present study. The fourth section is devoted to the introduction of the research methods for the present study, including research questions, corpus of the present study, research procedures, and data analysis. The fifth section is the discussion of the present study. It focuses on the linguistic realization of hedges in English and Chinese news reports and the similarities and differences of the use of hedges in data. It also discusses the adaptability of hedges in communicative context and summarizes the primary pragmatic functions of hedges in news reports. In the sixth section, a conclusion of the present study is presented, and the implications and limitations of the present study are proposed.