A Study On Hedging In Diplomatic Language From A Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Since the publication of Fuzzy Sets (Zadeh, 1965), there has been a prosperous research in the field of fuzzy linguistics. Hedging, constituting an important part of fuzzy linguistics, has also drawn much attention of linguists. The thesis consists of five parts. After briefly introducing the outline of the paper, the author reviews the main researches on hedging at home and abroad. Then within the framework of Adaptation Theory, the paper analyzes hedging strategy employed by spokespersons in their remarks. Finally the author draws a conclusion to the study, pointing out the limitations of the research and giving a few suggestions to the future study.Hedging is a deliberate or intentional communicative strategy employed by addressors on purpose to realize their communicative needs. For it is characterized by flexibility and appropriateness, it artfully shelters spokespersons from exposing too much of their information and subtly helps them to save face while direct language will possibly incur face-threaten. Diplomatic spokespersons therefore frequently adopt this strategy to achieve their communicative intentions in RPC.Based on Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, this thesis makes a qualitative research and inquires into the application of hedging in diplomatic language by dissecting the remarks of spokespersons in RPC. From the perspective of structural adaptability and contextual adaptability, this paper places extra emphasis on analyzing clearly what structural objects of adaptability hedging has in diplomatic language. The findings indicate that hedging in spokespersons remarks mainly presents its structural adaptability at the lexical level and the syntactic level. Spokespersons manipulate these linguistic forms of hedging to transfer different illocutionary forces. The communicative means of hedging strategy, which can make utterances neither true nor false and haveindeterminate interpretations, meets the special purpose of diplomacy ------ tosatisfy different countries' national interests and their political relationships. Meanwhile, the findings also indicate that spokespersons are fully aware of and highly motivated in their linguistic choice of hedging. By means of the hedging strategy, the mental world, the social world and the physical world (the contextual correlates), are adapted to in the language of RPC. Therefore, spokespersons' communicative needs and intentions are realized.It is found out that on political and diplomatic occasions, the proper use of hedging would contribute to the enhancement of language validity to some extent, rather than weaken the accuracy of political diplomatic language. The present study on hedging may have done meager strength to push forward the theoretical researches on fuzzy linguistics and pragmatics. Besides, The research may also enlighten those who are engaged in diplomatic work, translation and educational work. They may get some implications from this study to help understand political diplomatic language more accurately.