The Study Of Contextual Effects On Hedging Strategies

With the establishment of fuzzy theory and the development of vague language, hedging strategies have received a great deal of attention. For a long time, interests are focused on the semantic roles played by hedging in spoken and written language. The connection between hedging and context remains insignificant. The present paper tries to explore the effects of context on hedging from two aspects: general contextual effects on the uses of hedging and specific contextual effects on the functions of hedging.The study is divided into two parts due to the two aspects involved. The first part intends to study the contextual effects qualitatively by means of the three dimensions of context and the second part devotes to the quantitative study of the effects by means of word frequency. Both studies reveal that the understanding and employment of hedging are inseparable from the interpretation of context. After the discussion of the analytical results, the author tries to make some implications for Chinese speakers, which serve as the end of the study.