A Pragmatic Analysis Of Hedges In English Political Interviews

Political interview, an important medium of projecting the statesmen's desired messages, is a special and widely-used way of political communication. In order to convey a favorable impression of policy or personality and make it easily accepted by the public, the statesmen are likely to adopt some communicative strategies that can make their statements more polite and tactful, and so are the interviewers for the sake of making successful interviews. Vagueness as one of the intrinsic features of natural language always exists in linguistic facts, but it was not until 1965 when American scientist L. A. Zadeh proposed"Fuzzy Set"in the journal of Information and Control that it began to draw attention and interest. Based on the previous studies, it is found that as the major part of vague language, hedges play great roles in spoken or written communication. Political interview is a casually verbal interaction yet under rather formal context, so hedging in political interviews deserves to be further investigated.Based on the previous studies of hedges at home and abroad, this research aims to systematically analyze the hedges in English political interviews according to the pragmatic theories of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face-saving Theory. This study randomly selects 10 political interviews from 60 Minutes (CBS), Larry King Live (CNN), and World News (ABS) as the research subjects and there are approximately 30,847 words in total. On the basis of these data, this research makes a pragmatic analysis of hedges in EPI in an attempt to solve the following questions: (1) What are the hedges used in English political interviews? (2) In what ways are hedges used as one of the communicative strategies in English political interviews from the pragmatic perspective? (3)What are the pragmatic functions of hedging in English political interviews?This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction of the present research. It lays out research background, research significance, research objectives and the organization of this thesis.Chapter Two is mainly about the literature review of the related studies on hedges/hedging and the occurrence of hedges in English political interviews. It also provides the theoretical framework for the present research.Chapter Three centers upon the research design, which includes the research questions, data collection, research methodology and procedures of the thesis. What is more, the working definition and classification of hedges adopted in this research are presented in this chapter as well.Chapter Four is the main part of this research, which focuses principally upon the data analysis and results discussion. Firstly, through the working definition and classification, the hedges are identified and classified. And the different types of hedges are analyzed with the support of some Tables and instances. Then, the pragmatic analysis of hedges in EPI is laid out based on the pragmatic theories of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face-saving Theory. Finally, this chapter discusses the pragmatic functions of hedges in EPI, and it draws a conclusion that hedges cannot be simply judged as bad or wrong, and instead, they can perform great functions if used appropriately.Chapter Five is the conclusion part. It summarizes the major findings of the research and presents the implications and limitations of the present study. Meanwhile, suggestions for further studies are also covered in this chapter.In conclusion, hedging in EPI can be regarded as the speakers'communicative strategies such as cooperative willingness, showing politeness and saving face, which may help the speakers achieve their communicative goals. The statesmen often use hedges to show their best face for their personality and credibility or even for their parties; and meanwhile the interviewers do that for the sake of carrying out successful interviews. Therefore, hedging in EPI does perform such specific pragmatic functions as enhancing credibility, strengthening self-protection, shifting or weakening responsibility, avoiding giving details, showing politeness, and achieving persuasive effect.