| Extensive studies have been launched by scholars at home and abroad ever since Lakoff(1972)proposed the notion hedges.In the thesis,hedges are treated as a pragmatic strategy in communication which is used to show the speaker’s degree of commitment to the proposition or to modify the illocutionary force of a speech act in hopes of achieving certain communicative effects.Interview programs are gaining increasing popularity nowadays because they adapt to people’s quick tempo of life and provide a platform for effective communication.Hosts,as a key factor influencing the success of interview programs,usually pay special attention to linguistic strategies in the process of hosting,among which the extensive use of hedges is included.By reviewing the previous studies on hedges as well as hosts in interview programs,three limitations have been found: 1)hedges are mainly analyzed in written texts,but much less in spoken discourses such as interview programs;2)even in the small number of studies on hedges used in interview programs,hedges used by hosts,the unique social role,have not received due attention;3)previous studies about hosts in interview programs are mainly conducted from the perspectives ranging from ways of expression,interviewing techniques,quality,and role-positioning to personality,while the combination of hosts and their use of hedges tends to be less addressed.The gaps in the previous studies and hosts’ key role in interview programs contribute to the necessity of studies on the hedges used by hosts in interview programs.As far as Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory is concerned,language use is a process of making choices continuously among various levels of linguistic forms,with the purpose of meeting the communicative needs.With the contextual correlates of adaptability as the theoretical framework,and two well-accepted interview programs named A Date with Luyu and Kevin Hours as the sources of data,the thesis aims to conduct a pragmatic analysis of hedges used by hosts through randomly selecting 60 videos(30 for each)between 2012 and 2016 from the two interviewprograms.Three research questions are to be solved: 1)What contextual factors do hedges used by hosts adapt to? 2)What uni-functions do adaptors and other kinds of hedges display by adapting to the contextual factors? 3)How are multi-functions realized in the hedges used by hosts? By doing the research,three findings have been made.Firstly,hedges used by hosts mainly adapt to emotions and wishes of guests,and intentions of hosts in the mental world;in addition,they also adapt to social identity and degree of intimateness between hosts and guests in the social world;while the physical world is not much connected here.Secondly,adaptors,the major hedges used by hosts,can display such functions as creating resonance,minimizing potential offence to guests,strengthening the effect of joking to create a harmonious atmosphere and making praise-expressing appropriate.Two new functions are added by other kinds of hedges,namely,protecting hosts themselves,and assisting in disseminating right social norms.Thirdly,multi-functions are explored in two ways,namely,multiple hedges performing the same function,and the same hedge performing multiple functions in different contexts or even in the same context.The thesis is expected to be meaningful in at least three ways.Firstly,it is beneficial to enlarging the research scope of hedges and enriching the current studies about hosts in interview programs.Secondly,it provides a reference for less-competent hosts to improve their pragmatic competence and realize better effects in interview programs.Lastly,it is also of great help for ordinary audience to deepen their understanding of the use of hedges,and learn to achieve better communicative effects in daily conversation by using hedges properly. |
