| Studies of Weather forecasts have been ongoing both at home and abroad in recent years due to its close relation with people ’s daily life.But many of them are mainly approached from the perspective of technology,meteorology and culture.For the past few decades,weather forecast,as a special discourse,has arisen the attention and interests of linguists.Some fruitful researches,as a result,are conducted on hedge use in weather forecast so as to investigate why precise language is not used in weather forecast texts.However,literature review indicates that contrastive study on English weather forecasts and C hinese weather forecasts are fewer.In view of it,the thesis attempts to make a contrast analysis of use of hedges in both texts so as to explore their similarities and differences and the pragmatic functions behind through quantitative and qualitative methods.The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on Cooperative Principle.Data for analysis come from C hinese Weather and Accuweather,50 pieces for each.After manual classification and tagging 3011 pieces of hedges are collected based on the definitions of hedges by scholars as shown in Chapter Four.Based on Prince et el.’s Model of hedges from semantics and pragmatics the hedges in the study are divided into two categories: approximator and shield.The former can be further divided into adaptor and rounder,while the latter into plausibility shield and attribution shield.Major findings: analysis from comparing the percentages,Mean N umber and Standard Deviation manifested that there are many similarities and differences in the use of hedges in each text.Firstly,hedges are widely used in the two newspapers,in which there are 1581 pieces of WFs in CWFs and 1430 pieces of WFs in EWFs.Besides,the frequency of approximators and attribution shields are similar with each other.However,there are more approximators in C hinese weather forecasts,whereas English weather forecasts have more rounders and shields.Secondly,massive use of hedges in EWFs and CWFs can be explained by Cooperative Principle,technological and cultural factors.Finally,hedges bear some pragmatic functions in practical application,which can help weather forecasters to express some special information so that to protect them from embarrassment.The thesis ends with a conclusion of the findings,limitations of the study,and suggestions for future studies. |
