Pragmatic Study Of Hedges In Teacher Talk In High School English Classes

It is universally believed that a teacher should use concise and clear language to express his ideas in class. Actually, there exist abundant hedges in teacher talk. As one important component of vague family, hedges which are known as the pragmatic device for communicators, are widely used in communication. Therefore, more and more linguists have shown concern for hedges. When the fuzziness of hedges has been acknowledged, scholars have conducted many researches on hedges in various fields and obtained outstanding achievements.However, from relevant literature at home and abroad, it is noteworthy that little work has been done on the hedges from the authentic language teaching conditions, especially from the perspective of teacher talk. The thesis conducts an empirical study on hedges in teacher talk in high school English class from the pragmatic perspective. The present study attempts to find out:1. How hedges are actually used by English teachers in class in terms of their distribution and frequency?2. What are the pragmatic functions that hedges perform in teacher talk in English class?3. What are the attitudes of teachers towards the application of hedges in teacher talk?The thesis chooses 18 senior high school teachers, who are all the contestants from Excellent English Course Competition of Guizhou, as the research subjects. By means of transcribing their teaching videos into word documents, the author identifies hedges in teacher talk and categorizes them into four types according to Prince et al’s taxonomy of hedges, namely, adaptors, rounders, plausible shields and attribution shields. The distribution and frequency of four types of hedges are discussed. In addition, the author analyses the pragmatic functions of hedges in detail at different teaching processes within the framework of the three basic pragmatic theories, which mainly include cooperative principle, conversational implicature, and the theory of politeness. Furthermore, as a means of auxiliary research, an interview with 9 front-line English teachers is conducted so as to get a clear idea of teachers’ attitudes towards the application of hedges in teacher talk.The results show that not all types of hedges are equally used by teachers. Adaptors and plausible shields are more frequently used, which account for 50.3% and 30.94%. Among all the hedges in teacher talk, rounders and attribution shields are less used, which take up 10.24% and 8.29% respectively. It is found that the appropriate use of hedges could help to improve information precision, show politeness and protect both teachers and students’ face as a remedy for self-protection.From the interview, all teachers admit that hedges are often applied in the teaching process, but they tend to use them in class unconsciously, as some don’t have a full understanding about hedges.Some pedagogical suggestions are put forward for the improvement of teachers’ pragmatic competence when using hedges on the basis of the research results. Moreover, this study also sheds light on the significance of hedges in teaching and could contribute to successful communication.