Analysis On The Application Of The Hedges In English Speech Of University Students

Studies on hedges begin in the early 1970s.It is first studied from the logic andsemantic perspectives to explain words that can make things fuzzy. With thedevelopment of pragmatics, the concept of hedges develops far from its origins.Nowadays, hedges are viewed as devices to realize hedging strategy for the purposeof politeness, mitigation, vagueness, and modality. In written text, it is argued that anylinguistic form can be identified as a hedging strategy as long as it indicatestentativeness and possibility. Previous studies pay a great deal of attention on hedgingin written text, both theoretically and empirically. However, the application ofhedging in spoken English has rarely been looked into although there have been someattempts to do so. The author finds that there are hardly any researches on theapplication of hedging in the English speech contest of Chinese university students.Nevertheless, this kind of researches has great significance. Through the researches onthe application of hedging in spoken English, we can know the characteristics of thehedging application of the Chinese learners, and compare them with those of thenative English speakers. The conclusions can be used in English teaching or training,to make the Chinese English learners’language, or at least their hedging usage, moreidiomatic.The study is a quantitative one with an observation in the source material at first.The source material of the study consists of all the speeches and answers to questionsof the top ten contestants in the 14th 21st century Lenovo cup national English speechcontest, which are the main study subject of Chapter 5. In order to make the resultsmore objective, the author also makes use of the speeches from 2008 CCTV Cup and2010 Fltrp Cup English speech contests. These contestants are representatives whocan reflect the top English capacity of Chinese university students. This study, whoseclassification of hedging means is based on the Hyland’s (1998) one, has a summaryand analysis to each part of every contestant. The analysis and the calculation of thedata are done by both the computer and the author proper, to guarantee the accuracy and exactitude of the results. The judging, or the selection of the hedges is donetotally by the author proper, which ensures that the context can be taken intoconsideration. The study, by quantitative or sometimes qualitative means, analyzes theapplication of hedges in the Chinese university students’speeches. Then thebackground of the phenomena can be known. The situation of foreign languageteaching will be described, and the means of improvement will be researched. Ofcourse, the source material of this study does not cover all the English speeches byChinese students, and the means of calculation is relatively monotonous. Therefore,there might be some deviations from other studies which are based on other corporaor other methodology. Relative studies will be conducted later on.The study first has a look-back on the researches done by other scholars, andextracts the definition and classification of hedges and hedging that is suitable for it.The classification is mainly based on the Hyland’s one. The third part emphasizes onthe theoretical bases of hedging studies, including the theories of language vagueness,the speech act and the politeness strategies. The fourth part is about the range andcriteria of choosing samples and the procession of data. The fifth part, the main bodyof the study, is on the comparison and analyses of the contestants’speeches, based onthe three steps of the contest. After each step of every contestant, there will be a tableor a graph to help clarify the data. Then the last part is the conclusion.The author finds several characteristics of hedging usage in the study that areworth noticing. First, the modal auxiliaries take up the majority in the hedging usage,some of which are misused, unfortunately. Then, the usage of epistemic verbs rises asthe randomness of speech increases. But the more random the speech is, the moremonotonous the verbs are used. In the last part, the question-answering, the rawnumber of hedging epistemic verbs is large while three main verbs takes up nearly80% of the total. So, there is kind of monotony in the Chinese English learners’hedging usage.This study reveals the great significance of hedging and hedges in Englishspeeches, and provides some suggestions and resource for other scholars who areinterested in the topic. Appropriate usages of hedging in English speeches can make the speeches more persuasive, more vivid, and can make the speakers and the listenerscloser to each other. Therefore, in the teaching of spoken English or English speeches,the teachers should give a guide for the students to use the hedges and hedgingproperly besides emphasizing on the pronunciation and fluency. By using hedges, thequality of spoken English can be enhanced and the communication with otherfacilitated.