| Researches on hedges started from 1970s. G. Lakoff first presented the term"hedge"in 1972 and he pointed out that hedges were those words"whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy."From then on, more and more scholars focused on the study of hedges and made great achievements. As a main form of mass media, news report plays an important role in people's daily life. News report needs to be accurate, objective and brief, which seems to deny the existence of hedges. However, hedges are in fact frequently used in news report.Previous studies on hedges in news reports mainly focused on the pragmatic functions by using pragmatic theories and most of the studies adopted qualitative method to analyze the hedging phenomenon in news reports. In the thesis, both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted on the basis of a small self-built corpus. Analyses of hedges in expo news reports can be found from semantic and pragmatic perspectives. The thesis takes the 2010 Shanghai world expo news reports as corpora sources. All the 67 news reports come from the website of Anglo-American mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/), Los Angles Times (http://www.latimes.com/), The Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) and The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/). The main topic is about 2010 Shanghai World Expo in China and the time lasts from 3 Dec 2002 when China won the 2010 World Expo to 31 Oct 2010 when the event was closed. On the basis of the relatively influential classification of hedges which put forward by E. F. Prince, the thesis adopts Antconc software and manual annotation method for data collection.The study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) What is the overall frequency and distribution of hedges in expo news reports?(2) What is the semantic prosody of hedges in expo news reports?(3) What are the pragmatic functions of hedges in expo news reports?(4) What are the reasons for employing hedges in expo news reports?(5) What are the attitudes of western press towards Shanghai World Expo?Major findings of the thesis: (1) There exists a large number of hedges in expo news reports and approximators are more frequently used than shields. (2) By analyzing three frequently used hedges"most","more than"and"will", the author finds that most of the semantic prosodies are neutral, while positive prosody takes a big proportion in certain colligations. (3) In view of the wide-ranging of the contents, proper use of hedges in expo news reports will make news language briefer and more objective, meanwhile helping journalists more efficiently express their opinions. (4) Due to the limitation of journalists' cognitive ability, the limited time for readers and some features of expo news reports themselves, hedges are inevitable in expo news reports. (5) Overall, the attitude of western press towards Shanghai World Expo is relatively objective, but for the developments and changes of China and Shanghai, the attitude is positive.On the basis of corpus studies of hedges in expo news reports, the thesis not only has theoretical meaning, which enriches the study of hedges from semantic and pragmatic perspectives, but also has practical significance, which provides a reference for further study of hedges in news reports. Meanwhile, the results of the thesis are helpful for journalists to use the hedges appropriately and for readers to better understand the connotation of news reports.
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