Pragmatic Study On Hedges In English News On Health From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Fussiness plays a crucial part in process of human language communication.Hedge,the typical representative of fuzziness,is considered as a ubiquitous communicative strategy.The employment of hedges not only modifies some linguistic elements,but also enables communicators to realize the communicative goals easily in the process of language communication.Ever since the American linguist George Lakoff first came up with the notion of“hedge”in 1972,the countless scholars,wherever at home and abroad,have spared no efforts to conduct studies on hedges from diverse perspectives.In the light of the researches from pragmatic perspective,there is a small part of pragmatic analyses on hedges made on the basis of Verschueren?s Linguistic Adaptation Theory,however,most of are carried out under the framework of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle.This study firstly attempts to find out the abundant existence of hedges in English news,then analyze the adaptation of hedges in English news to various contextual correlates,finally explore the pragmatic functions of hedges.Therefore,the following three research questions will be discussed in this paper according to the framework of Verschueren?s Linguistic Adaptation Theory,employing Lakoff?s definition and Prince et al.?s classification on hedges:?1?What are the overall frequency and distribution of hedges used in English news on health in Lifestyle of China Daily??2?How do these hedges adapt to the various contextual correlates in English news on health in Lifestyle of China Daily??3?What are the pragmatic functions of hedges in English news on health in Lifestyle of China Daily?The current thesis establishes a mini-corpus,collecting 61 pieces of news releases on health that are reported from January,1^st.2019 to October,31^th.2019 under the item Lifestyle of China Daily,which is one of the most authoritative mass mediums.This paper analyzes and studies the collected corpus by combining qualitative and quantitative research methodology.Firstly,in the light of Prince et al?s classification,this thesis identifies the four kinds of hedges in English news on health.Secondly,this thesis makes a quantitative analysis for the four subcategories of hedges by calculating the frequency and percentage respectively,namely,adaptors,rounders,plausibility shields and attribution shields.Meanwhile,this paper discovers that all of the four kinds of hedges are abound in the small self-built corpus and attribution shields are the most favored among them.Thirdly,on the basis of Verschueren?s Linguistic Adaptation Theory,this thesis conducts a qualitative analysis for the adaptability of hedges to various contextual correlates,including the physical world,the social world and the mental world,in which analyzes numerous excerpts from the mini-corpus so as to discuss the adaptation to different world in detail.Finally,this thesis concludes specific pragmatic functions of hedges in English news on health.After making a relatively detailed analysis of the collected corpus,there are several findings:first,there are pervasive hedges existed in English news on health,and the news writers much prefer to employ attribution shields to others.Secondly,in the process of news writing,news writers make a adaptation to various factors in order to realize the communicative goals,which consist of accuracy and objectivity within the physical world,social formalities and culture norms within the social world,and both of communicators?mental world,that is,writers and readers.Thirdly,the variety of pragmatic functions that hedges act on the English news on health are:enhancing accuracy,avoiding absoluteness,protecting news writers and highlighting focus.These findings are conducive to enriching the pragmatic researches on hedges in English news on health.Moreover,this paper can not only help the reporters to appropriately use hedges,but also help the readers to correctly understand the English news on health.