| Hedging, as an important factor of fuzziness, occurs frequently in human language. Under political circumstances, hedging dramatically enhances linguistic expressiveness and communicative effects. Its proper use to some degree highlights the effect of mildness, politeness and flexibility of linguistic expressions, and improves the political relationship between discourse participants, thus helping achieve special political purpose. In the past years, much progress has been made in hedging study and its application to various styles. However, little work has been done in the relationship between hedging and political discourse.Based on English and Chinese political discourses (both spoken and written forms) and taking qualitative approach, this thesis aims at summarizing the grammatical realization of hedging in political discourse and explores its pragmatic accounts in a deeper level, thus decoding the real meaning conveyed by hedges in political discourse. Hedging in political discourse can be realized on three levels in terms of some grammatical items; Instead of being employed arbitrarily, hedging in political discourse is inclined to follow some pragmatic principles. Essentially, hedging in political discourse can be decoded by three important pragmatic principles, the CP (the Co-operative Principle), the PP (the Politeness Principle) and the FTA (the Face Threatening Act theory), and in nature it is a pragmatic device employed by politicians to achieve certain political aims and to sustain political interests and relationships as well.The thesis contains five parts as follows:Chapter One elucidates the purpose and significance of the present study and lists the data sources and the framework of the whole dissertation.Chapter Two is the preliminaries of the study. To begin with, this chapter makes a brief survey of the hedging research in the past decades in both China and abroad, laying a theoretical basis for the study. Furthermore, a narrowly... |
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