A Pragmatic Analysis Of Hedging In Lawyers' Arguments

Employing descriptive and analytical method, the present thesis probes into hedging in lawyers' arguments, in both Chinese and English contexts. The aim of the study is to describe routine practices of hedging in lawyers' arguments and demonstrate how hedging functions in the legal context.Following Hyland's model, three types of hedges are identified in the Chinese and English data: accuracy-oriented hedges, speaker-oriented hedges, and hearer-oriented hedges. Detailed analysis suggests that there are different linguistic devices and different functions as to the three types of hedges. Although the difference between languages affects the linguistic devices, as a whole, however, there are great similarities in Chinese and English arguments.The research also shows that lawyers frequently use hedging to achieve their communicative purposes in their arguments. Hedging can be used to display the lawyer's concern of precision, to protect the lawyer from possible negatabitility, and to convey the lawyer's attitude towards the hearer's active role in the argument.It is hoped that the present study may add to the existing research on hedging, and may help to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of lawyers' arguments and the linguistic strategies lawyers used.