A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Hedges In Verbal Communication

Hedges are a common phenomenon in language communication, no matter in verbal communication or written communication.Many scholars abroad have explored it from various perspectives. However, such research in China seems to be insufficient. Even less is the attention devoted to its cross linguistic comparison which plays a very important role in linguistic analysis. In such comparison, one can discover immediately in what respect hedges are language-universal and in what respect they are idiosyncratic and language-specific. Due to the above reasons, the present thesis is intended to make a comparative investigation of English and Chinese hedges.Quantitative and qualitative methods are used in the thesis to help a comparative study on hedges of English and Chinese and to discuss the similarities and differences between English and Chinese hedges. Then an interpretation of such similarities and differences is made according to adaptation theory. Moreover, it is hoped to provide some suggestions and implications for foreign language teaching in the respect of improving the learners' communicative competence and pragmatic competence.