Cognitive Understanding Of Approximators

Based on established cognitive theories, this thesis probes into the cognitive interpretation of one type of hedges called approximators and adopts news reports as research materials. The aim of this study is to form a cognitive model for the interpretation of hedges, and further attempts to explore the cognitive understanding mechanism of hedges. The present study mainly consists of a survey study and a cognitive analysis. In order to investigate readers'attitudes and their intuitive understanding of approximators, the author conducted a survey study, which contained a questionnaire and an interview with 30 non-English major postgraduates. The survey study revealed that approximators were common linguistic phenomenon in news reports, which had little influence on readers'understanding of information. Readers interpreted approximators with the combination of their psychological states and social knowledge. Readers'personality, beliefs, desires and social knowledge played an important role in their interpretation of approximators. This survey also tested that approximators were context-sensitive not only from producers but also from interpreters. Based on this survey, the author carried out a cognitive analysis on the reader's understanding process of approximators. On the basis of the relevance theory and the adaptation theory, the author presents a relevance-adaptation model from the reader's point of view. This model achieves adequacy in terms of description and explanation which the relevance theory and the adaptation theory fall short of. Within the relevance-adaptation model, the author describes the reader's understanding of approximators from a cognitive point view. According to relevance-adaptation model, the interpretation of approximators is a dynamic process in searching for optimal relevance. Presumptions of relevance are drawn at three worlds: mental world, social world and physical world. Through adapting to the three worlds, readers choose the presumption which in accordance with optimal relevance and consequently arrive at a suitable interpretation of an approximator.