An Analysis Of Hedging Expressions Used In English Political Interviews

Based on Halliday's Functional Grammar, this thesis discusses the features and interpersonal functions of hedging expressions used in English political interviews. Seven English political interviews on Iraq war were randomly selected as the data used in the study.Hedging expressions are widely used in both oral and written communication. Such expressions serve as a means for speakers to achieve objectivity and credibility and to protect themselves from possible challenges or confrontations. The appropriate use of such expressions could mitigate the harshness of one's utterances and eventually facilitate the communication.According to Halliday (2000), language is a resource for meaning making and it serves three meta-functions, that is, ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The interpersonal function of language serves to establish and maintain social relations. It encompasses the dynamics of the relationship between the speaker and the hearer and the use of language to express one's attitude and to influence the attitude or the behaviour of the hearer.As the political interview provides politicians with a good opportunity for self-advertising, the interpersonal function of hedging expressions takes on much more importance than the other two functions and as a result, will be put in the foreground. And analyzing the interpersonal function of hedging expressions used in political interviews is of much significance in uncovering the underlying motivation of the use of this sort of language on the part of the speaker.The analysis of the data has yielded the following major findings:Firstly, hedging expressions used in English political interviews mainly consist of epistemic words and expressions and inclusive or general personal pronouns with the latter outnumbering the former, largely due to the hearer-appealing function those personal pronouns perform.Among those epistemic words and expressions, subjective probability outweighs objective probability and subjective explicit probability plays a dominant role. It may be largely due to the fact that political interviews provide politicians with a good opportunity to advertise themselves and thus, from their point of view, to advertise themselves by means of overtly expressing their personal attitudes may be more important than to be objective. As far as the inclusive or general personal pronouns are concerned, in political interviews, the former is often used to refer to the group including the hearer or to the authority that the speaker believes he represents while the latter in the data is primarily used to refer to the hearer in general.Secondly, as to the interpersonal functions of those hedging expressions, speaker-oriented hedging expressions are often adopted to convey a tentative tone for the sake of self-protection or to show respect to the hearer. Hearer-oriented hedging expressions are mostly used to create a congenial relationship between the two. To be more specific, they are used to shorten the distance between the speaker and the hearer, or to persuade the hearer, or even to impose the speaker's will upon the hearer skillfully.The functional analysis of those expressions also has pedagogical implications. Halliday (2000:70) suggests that"language is functioning simply as a means towards achieving what are essentially non-linguistic ends". As can be seen, L2 learners tend to pay more attention to big words or complex structures and neglect minor ones such as hedging expressions, which in effect play an indispensable role in a successful communication. And learners are also often found to focus on language forms instead of their specific functions. This study, by analyzing hedging expressions in English political interviews, would, to a certain degree, arouse L2 learners'awareness of the role of hedging expressions and familiarize them with their features and functions so that they could handle them properly in communication. Besides, investigation and description of this kind will help L2 learners have a better understanding of hedging expressions used in this particular genre, and at the same time enable people to see the importance of combining language forms with their functions in the process of foreign language learning and teaching. In addition, hedging expressions could help teachers in classroom instruction to relieve the learners from stress or insecurity.