A Pragmatic Study Of Hedges In Teacher Talk In English Classes

Hedges, as an important member of fuzzy language family, were first put forward by George Lakoff in 1972. He defined them as"words whose functions are to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy". Lakoff analyzed and studied hedges mainly from the perspective of semantics. Following Lakoff, many scholars abroad and at home studied hedges deeply from different perspectives, including pragmatics, textual analysis, sociolinguistics, etc. From the past study on hedges, it involved in technology, economy, medicine, news, advertisement, law, etc. But few people studied hedges in teaching, especially hedges in teacher talk in classroom teaching. This thesis focuses on the study on hedges in teacher talk in classroom teaching. It aims to know the situation of hedges used in teacher talk at senior high schools, and to explore the pragmatic functions in classroom teaching. This study is of important theoretic significance and practical significance. It helps broaden study fields of hedges. It helps arouse teachers'attention to regulate their talk in classroom teaching. It also helps teachers realize how to use hedges perfectly in classroom teaching in order to teach efficiently and to promote students to learn efficiently.This study adopted natural investigation method. Without telling the teachers to be investigated in advance, the author visited eight teachers'classes, one class for each teacher. During the classes, the author made some notes about the class situation. Meanwhile the teacher talk was recorded with mp3. After class, the records were transferred to written words, from which hedges were picked out. Then the hedges picked out were classified according to Prince et al'classification of hedges. All the hedges were also be discussed and analyzed. After that, the eight teachers were interview in order to find out further how they view hedges and whether they use hedges often. According to the statistics, hedges were widely used in teacher talk. Finally, the hedges collected in the teachers'talk were analyzed in the perspective of pragmatic functions. It found that hedges in teacher talk are of abundant pragmatic functions: reducing students'anxiety, encouraging students to be active,defending teachers'and students'faces, communicating smoothly, making words flexible, defending speakers, improving expressions'accuracy, enjoying students'trust.