A Study Of Hedging In English Business Letters And Its Pragmatic Functions

The language in business letters requires clearness and precision. However, hedging in business letters is a common phenomenon. That is because hedging is linguistic phenomenon which ubiquitously exists in the human communication. Hedging is one of the intrinsic properties of natural language. In recent years, more and more scholars have come to realize that hedging is also a useful means of exchanging ideas, and it plays a very important role in language communication.Based on the Adaptation Theory, Cooperative Principle, and Politeness Principle, the present study ventures to analyze hedging in eight types of business letters, and explores the frequencies of hedging in each of the eight types of business letters, the distribution of each of the four categories of hedges, the reasons for hedging, the corresponding pragmatic functions hedging may perform through the theoretical presentation and specific analysis, and the distribution of functions in business letters.Data were collected from selected English business letters which were classified into eight types, and analyzed on the basis of the classification of letters and hedges. And there are the main findings:The frequencies of hedging in different types of business letters are different. The frequency of hedging in counter-offer letters ranks the first, while that in enquiry letters is the same with that in order letters, which ranks the least. The differences in frequency are due to the different writing purposes of different types of business letters.The distribution of each of the four categories of hedges in the eight types of business letters is very distinctive. The hedges employed in the business letters mainly belong to the category of adaptors, one of the two subcategories of approximators. That is because with adaptors one can express idea appropriately, make expressions much closer to the facts and avoid the subjective assertion.The results of the present study show that people may resort to hedges when they are unable to be more precise and unwilling to be more precise. If the language producer has no ability to express his/her thought with exactitude due to the memory loss and/or lack of relevant knowledge or the vacancy of suitable accurate words, hedging occurring under such conditions is regarded as non-deliberate use. If hedging is employed with salient intentions, it is considered as deliberate use.Also, hedging in business letters is a result of linguistic choices. It is adaptable to the addresser's communicative intentions, politeness motivation and cooperation motivation. Hedging in business correspondence benefits the addresser a lot by making business letters more flexible, appropriate and polite. Hedging in business letters could benefit the addresser a lot in helping realize the communicative purposes by generating pragmatic functions. Hedging in business letters can help the addresser make the business letters more polite and persuasive, protect the addresser and help withhold some information.It is hoped that the present study may enrich the research on hedging and provide some hints of why people employ hedges in business communication to help people have a better understanding and to be more efficient and flexible in composing and understanding business letters.