On Hedging And Hedging In Review Articles

Fuzzy linguistics is a new science generated through combination of fuzzy-set theory and modem linguistics, study of which is of great significance to exploration of many other fields, such as artificial intelligence. Hedging, as a part of fuzzy linguistics, is an area that awaits much further research.Based on the various definitions of hedging put forward by investigators, this paper proposes a new definition for hedging from the point of view of pragmatics. A new taxonomy of hedging is also suggested.The present research investigates the forms, frequencies and functions of hedging in review articles. Firstly, hedging devices are identified and counted in the corpus of English review articles. It is found that hedging is an essential part of language in review writing. A number of lexical and non-lexical hedging devices occur in review articles. Then detailed analyses are made of how hedging is realized through those lexical and non-lexical devices with support of instances taken from the corpus. Thirdly, the major communicative functions of hedging in review articles are discussed. The result reveals that hedging performs both textual and interpersonal communicative functions. It is a politeness or face-saving strategy and a self-protective strategy as well. Finally, a brief comparative study is conducted between Chinese review articles and English ones to investigate whether the findings and insights of the research could provide some valuable implications for review writing in China. It is found that hedging strategies are far less frequently employed in Chinese-language review articles and there are some weaknesses with Chinese review writing. The paper suggests that hedging would be of value to the improvement of Chinese review writing.