A Qualitative Research Of Hedges In English Advertising

With the development of the commercial economy, the advertisement, as a means of vital importance in the interpersonal communication this era, has penetrated into the various aspects of human’s lives. It has a great influence on human living and ideas to a large extent. At the moment, there are kinds of researches on the advertisement. The scholars become more and more concerned about the topic. And with the development of the fuzzy linguistics, the scholars at home and abroad focus on the use of hedges in the advertisement. Fuzziness is the natural feature of the human language. The application of hedges to the advertising language makes the advertisement persuasive and fuzzy. The effect could promote the sales of the products or the service. However, the fuzziness in the advertising language leads the misunderstanding of the consumers. The scholars have different opinions about the hedges in the advertising language. Some insists that the fuzzy expression is a kind of cheat, while others think that the hedges could make the advertising language more attractive. We should view this problem objectively and dialectically. The thesis analyses the semantic and pragmatic interpretations of hedges and the semantic and pragmatic functions.As a member of the fuzzy language, hedge is first aroused by an American scholar, Lakoff in1971. Later, Fraser, Brown and Levinson studied the hedges from different aspects. In1980s, the scholars at home studied the hedges initially. However, the analysis of fuzziness in the English advertisements is rare. The research about the hedges in the advertisement is more rare. From the perspective of pragmatics, the thesis analyses the application of hedges and the pragmatic functions through the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. After stating the existing reasons of fuzziness, the thesis introduces the classifications of hedges from various aspects. The classification put forward by Prince et al. is emphasized. In their opinion, the hedges can be classified into approximators and shields. The two kinds are distinguished by the rule whether they could change the truth condition of the proposition.Because of its special function, the hedges are widely adopted in the advertisements. The features of the advertisement could not be well manifested without the application of hedges. Through these examples, the author finds that the reasons why the advertisers use hedges are lack of information, no need to be specific, avoiding troubles and protecting the benefit of the producers. The author quotes the Cooperative Principle to analyze the pragmatic functions of hedges. People violate one maxim in order to adhere to another maxim. In the advertisements, the hedges can work emphatically, reinforcing accuracy, saving face of the advertisers and the consumers and achieving politeness. The advertisements need the hedges to achieve fuzziness, attraction and precision. The comprehensive analysis of hedges could promote the further study of semantics and pragmatics, and contribute to the correct use of hedges in the advertisements.The thesis is made up of five chapters. To begin with, the author introduces the objectivity, the significance, the data collection, the research methodology and the organization of the thesis entirely. In chapter two, the author makes a brief introduction to advertising language and vagueness. In addition, the previous studies of advertising language and fuzziness are displayed in order to show the importance of studying fuzziness in advertising language. Then the chapter defines and introduces hedges. The classifications of hedges are clearly stated. In the chapter, the author analyses the reasons for the existence of hedges. Chapter three analyses the hedges in the advertisements from the semantic perspective. The next chapter elaborates an analysis of hedges in advertising language from the perspective of pragmatic perspective and adopts the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. And then the functions of using hedges in adverting language are generalized. The last chapter shows the conclusion, limitations of the study. And the suggestions for further research are also provided in this part.