An Analysis Of The Use Of Hedging In Online Shopping Reviews

Fuzziness is one of the typical features of human language.As a significant component of fuzziness,hedging plays a prominent role in daily communication.Scholars both at home and abroad have studied hedging from different perspectives and fields,but not many studies involve the discourse from the Internet,and fewer studies focus on the hedging used in online shopping reviews.This study attempts to probe into how the hedges are applied in online shopping feedback based on the 600 reviews collected from Taobao,each gender of 300 texts.All the hedges included are manually selected and classified into four categories according to Prince et.al.'s(1982)pragmatic taxonomy.Through the combination of quantitative research method and qualitative research method,the study first investigates the frequency of each type of hedging,of which adaptor and plausibility are the main types used in online shopping reviews.By analyzing the top 10frequently-used hedge items,the study concludes that the reviewers prefer to use the adaptors which can deepen the degree of influence on modified expressions.Then the hedging strategies in online shopping reviews are not only studied from the co-occurrence of different types of hedge in each text,the tactics in highlighting positive aspects but also extracted from the negative feedback on Internet.Finally,the great divergence of the number of certain synonymous hedges is explained and the gender differences on hedging are also explored.The study finds out that hedging in online shopping reviews is informal and realistic,and hedge's application feature also reflects the virtuality of online shopping discourses.Moreover,hedging possesses important status in maintaining a good relationship between online reviewers and merchants,providing potential consumers with guiding opinions as well as conducting self-protection for reviewers.The study of hedging in this emerging online virtual communication not only extends the linguistic research fields,but also is an exploration of how hedging functions in thisnew life style.Meanwhile,the study expects to offer a case to help people better interpret and employ hedges in online communication.