A Study On Adaptability Of Hedges In A Streetcar Named Desire

As a vital component of fuzzy languages,hedging or hedge is an frequently used communicative strategy by language users,as well as an important pragmatic marker during the process of verbal communication.In spite of its universality and importance,studies on hedges in literary works,especially in dramatic conversations are comparatively rare.Given this fact,this thesis attempts to carry out an integrative study of hedges in drama with regards to their forms,generating mechanism,functions and features so as to explore why and how characters employ hedges.Based on the theoretical framework of Verschueren’s Linguistic Adaptation Theory and the data collected from A Streetcar Named Desire,this thesis,subject to a quantitative and qualitative analysis,examines the employment,incentives of adaptability,functions and linguistic features of hedges.Specifically,the thesis tries to answer the following four questions:(1)What are the distributions of hedges in each category?(2)To realize communicative intentions,to what contextual correlates do hedges adapt?(3)What are the functions of hedges?(4)What are the typical linguistic features of hedges?In response to the four questions,major findings of the thesis are as follows :Firstly,a total of 1278 tokens of hedges are found in the corpus,among which adaptors and plausible shields enjoy a distinctive advantage over the other three types;rounders and discourse markers are much the same in frequency;and attribute shields occupy the least proportion.Besides,hedges are represented in different forms in each type,so do hedges within the same category.Secondly,hedges are not isolated from contexts,but occur in a negotiable process of adaptation to contexts.Hedges are found to adapt to certain contextual correlates in three dimensions: physical,social and mental.As far as this study is concerned,time and space are two important correlates affecting the use of hedges in the physical world;social correlates including gender,occupation and domesticrelations are also crucial determinants;contextual correlates in the mental world are the most widespread and influential,and they are primarily dominated by emotions and motivations.These physical,social and mental factors work together to affect the choice of hedges,and provide an adequate explanation for the employment of hedges in dramatic texts.Thirdly,the functions of hedges can be summarized into four types: informative functions,interpersonal functions,discourse functions and stylistic functions.Informative functions of hedges modify the truth value of the proposition and express the speaker’s desire in providing the most accurate information.Interpersonal functions concern the relationship between the speaker and the hearer,and the use of hedges not only makes the utterance more appropriate,but also reinforces the interpersonal relationship.Discourse functions lie in the ability of hedges to organize discourse and coordinate turn-takings of the utterances in a sequence so as to guarantee the coherence and smoothness of communication.Stylistic functions include the following aspects: highlighting characterization,enhancing themes,creating imageries and achieving rhetorical effects.Finally,hedges are featured linguistically on lexical,syntactic and discourse levels.On lexical level,repetition strategy is often adopted to strengthen one’s emotions or realize the communicative goals efficiently;abbreviations or variants in simpler forms are found massively in colloquial languages;sometimes,the proposition can be stressed by collocations of hedges within the same or different categories.In terms of syntactic features of hedges,some parts of the proposition can be omitted and the rest can act as a whole sentence,and some adverbial hedges can make it come true;certain tenses and aspects can produce subtle effects either work alone or operate with each other,for example,past tense and progressive aspect.The application of hedges on discourse level generally focuses on the integrity of discourse structure,in this sense,they serve as hesitation or gap fillers.This study is of some theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it enriches the studies on hedges,providing a new and well explanatory model for further studies.Besides,it sheds some light on linguistic studies of literary works,thus narrowing the gap between different disciplines.Practically,this study has some implications for foreign language teaching,helping the language users to have a good command of hedging strategies so as to enable them to use hedges properly in daily life.