A Contrastive Study Of Hedges In Chinese And American Mainstream Newspapers’ COVID-19 Reports From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Vagueness,as one of the basic characteristics of language,widely exists in daily communication and written discourse,and hedges is a typical representative of vagueness.The related research mainly focuses on varieties of discourse analyses,such as academic writing,advertising,court discourse and so on.However,there is limited research on hedges of the COVID-19 reports at home and abroad.Therefore,based on the Adaptation Theory of Jef Verschueren,the definition of hedges made by Lakoff and the classification of hedges by Prince et al.,the author makes a contrastive study of hedges in the COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers,China Daily and New York Times.This study aims to answer two research questions: First,what are the similarities and differences in frequency and distribution of hedges in the COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers? Second,what are the influencing factors of similarities and differences in using hedges of the COVID-19 reports? In order to answer the questions,two corpora are built,quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted.Quantitative statistics is used to explore the frequency of hedges used in Chinese and American COVID-19 reports,and qualitative approach is to analyze the influencing factors of similarities and differences in hedges use.As for results,first,the study finds that there exist some similarities and differences in frequency and distribution of hedges in the COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers.In frequency,there are hedges both in Chinese and American COVID-19 reports,and there are more approximators,especially adaptors,than shields,especially plausibility shields.However,the overall frequency of hedges used in American COVID-19 reports is higher than that in Chinese reports,especially rounders and plausibility shields,but the proportion of adaptors and attribution shields is lower than that in Chinese reports.In distribution,adaptors are mainly lexical modal verbs,and rounders are mainly lexical adjectives.Both plausibility shields and attribution shields are mainly non-lexical.Nevertheless,there are fewer lexical verbs of adaptors in Chinese COVID-19 reports than in American reports,while there are more lexical adverbs of rounders.Secondly,hedges are widely used in the COVID-19 reports selected from Chinese and American mainstream newspapers,mainly to adapt to the physical world,social world and mental world of journalists and readers.The physical world involves time reference and space reference,the social world involves personal identity,culture and etiquette norms,and the mental world involves motivation,desire and emotion.However,different cultural values,language habits and ways of thinking will affect the preference of Chinese and American journalists in using hedges.The purpose of this study is to contrast the use of hedges in Chinese and American COVID-19 reports selected from mainstream newspapers,and explore their pragmatic features and factors.It may broaden the research scope of epidemic reports in COVID-19 and hedges,enhance domestic readers’ pragmatic awareness of hedges and enrich speech strategies for daily communication.