A Corpus-based Analysis Of Hedges In English Majors' Compositions

Hedges have flexible semantic meanings and abundant pragmatic functions. The proper use of hedges can make the language expressions more objective, accurate and polite. In the meanwhile, hedges can help language users avoid expressing too absolutely and increase the acceptability of language.In order to explore hedges in Chinese English majors' written English, With the assistance of statistical packages, such as SPSS and FoxPro, a contrastive analysis of hedges is conducted between English majors' compositions in Chinese Learners Corpus (CLEC/ST5) and written English in British National Corpus(BNC/W) by adopting qualitative and quantitative method. This paper analyzes the frequency, categories and distribution of hedges in the two corpora. The findings clearly indicate that, the types of hedges used in English majors' compositions are much fewer than those in native English speakers' written English, whereas the number of hedges in English majors' compositions is more than that in native English speakers' written English , in which the number of approximators is more, whereas the number of shields is less. The underling reasons mainly included: (1) the mistakes in the use of hedges in the compositions, (2) L1 Transfer, (3) cultural difference (4) the environment of language learning. In the conclusion, some pedagogy suggestions are provided to improve Chinese students' ability of using hedges and linguistic competence as well as pragmatic competence.