A Pragmatic Study Of Hedges In English Economic Speeches From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Fuzziness is pervasive around human life, so is in human language. Ever since the proposal of Fuzzy Set Theory by an American cybernetic researcher L.A.Zadeh in 1965, this theory has been applied to studies in various fields including linguistic research. Linguists adopt it as the theoretical foundation to study fuzziness in language. As a research object in fuzzy linguistics, "’hedge" was put forward by an American linguist George Lakoff in his academic article "A Study in Meaning Criterion and the Logic of Fuzzy Concept". According to him, hedges are "words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy". Since then, linguistic scholars have conducted theoretical and applied studies on hedges from various perspectives, such as semantic, pragmatic, discourse analysis, sociolinguistic, Second Language Acquisition and cross-cultural perspectives. These researches bring about great achievements, which provide deep insights for the succeeding researchers and language learners.The present study is a pragmatic study on hedges in English economic speeches, which has both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it extends the speech types involved in hedge studies, enriches the research achievements on hedge studies from the pragmatic perspective, and once again proves the feasibility of the application of the Cooperative Principle to hedge studies. Practically, it provides some reference for the succeeding researches on hedges, offers some guidance for public speakers and English learners in using hedges, and helps the audience to better understand the speeches.TED (short for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a non-profit organization based in the United States, famous for its TED conference which devotes to discovering "Ideas Worth Spreading". TED conference invites brilliant figures from various fields to share their innovative ideas in the form of speeches. Ever since the speech videos are posted in www.ted.com in 2006, the users of TED speech video have reached more than a billion by November 2012. The enormous influence of TED speech is one of the reasons why the author intends to take it as the research corpus.The thesis takes hedges in TED economic speeches as its research object and its research corpus consists of 27 pieces of TED economic speeches (from January 2010 to June 2015) with 60,897 words. On the ground of Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Prince and his colleagues’classification model of hedges, the author intends to explore five research questions with both quantitative and qualitative methods:(1) What are the frequency and percentage of different types of hedges used in English economic speeches? (2)What are the most frequently used hedges of different types in English economic speeches? (3)What are the linguistic realization forms of hedges of different types in English economic speeches? (4)How are different types of hedges used in English economic speeches from the perspective of Cooperative Principle? (5)What are the pragmatic functions of the hedges in English economic speeches?The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces the research background, the research purposes and significance as well as the overall structure of the thesis.Chapter two gives an overall view of the literature review of hedge, which at first summarizes the influential definitions, classification models and semantic features of hedge. Furthermore, some research achievements of the previous studies on hedges from various perspectives are reviewed. Finally, the definition and classification of public speech, and the characteristics of TED speech are presented, but special attention is given to the research achievements on hedges in public speeches since the author is going to study hedges in English economic speeches.Chapter three lays out the theoretical framework by interpreting Quality Maxim, Quantity Maxim, Manner Maxim, and Relation Maxim under the Cooperative Principle. In addition, conversational implicature and the development of Cooperative Principle are reviewed in this chapter.Chapter four is the methodology part with research questions, data collection, and research procedures being presented.Chapter five is the integral part of the study, in which several tables are included to display the data results more visually. Firstly, the overall distribution of hedges in English economic speeches, the respective distribution of different types of hedges, several most frequently used hedges of different types, as well as the linguistic realization forms of different types of hedges are discussed. Secondly, a pragmatic analysis of hedges based on the Cooperative Principle is conducted with the reasons and motivations for using hedges being analyzed. Thirdly, the pragmatic functions of hedges in economic speeches are concluded:enhancing persuasiveness, showing politeness and regards for the audience, keeping the speakers from taking responsibilities and increasing the interactions with the audience.Chapter six draws out the conclusion of the study by presenting the major findings, pointing out its implications, self-reflecting the limitations, and providing some suggestions for the further studies on hedges.The originality of the thesis lies in two aspects. On one hand, it extends the speech types involved in hedge studies. Previous studies on hedges in public speeches have focused on the political speeches and the college students’ speeches, but the study takes the economic speeches as the research corpus so as to conduct a pragmatic study on hedges. On the other hand, the fourth pragmatic function-increasing the interactions with the audience, is the new idea proposed by the author, because this point has rarely been mentioned in hedge studies on public speeches in spite of its significance for an excellent speech.