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A Contrastive Analysis Of Hedges In Chinese And American English News Based On Self-Compiled Corpus

Posted on:2013-01-22Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L LuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2235330371499441Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Fuzziness is one of basic features of language. Fuzziness in language can be analyzed by linguistics, in the process basic theories of linguistics and fuzzy set would be employed. In1972, American scholar Lakoff proposed the term "hedge" in his paper--Hedges:a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. During1970’s, most of studies in fuzzy linguistics were conducted from semantic perspectives. And in1980’s, more researches concerning fuzzy linguistics spread to fields like social linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and even cross-cultural communication. Actually, the application of fuzzy linguistics theories is realized in a wider area, hence it attracts more scholars. At abroad, many renowned scholars studied hedges, such as Fraser, Brown, Levinson, Leech, Hubler, Rosch, Myers and etc. At home, Professor Wu Tieping firstly introduced "fuzziness" in1979while he published his paper A Tentative Study on Fuzzy Language, which, in China, was the initial study of the fuzziness in language and hedges. After him, many scholars in China conducted researches in the fields of fuzzy linguistics and hedge from all perspectives. In China, hedging studies can be combined with basic theories of contrastive linguistic, so as to obtain more developments in new fields. In recent years, even though many scholars obtained fruitful results through their researches, the agreement hasn’t been reached in many aspects. Hedging studies, especially in some specific contexts (like news, laws, and business texts), lack authorized researching result.News provides a specialized context for language learners and studiers. News writers are required to respond to demands of two parties. News reporting needs to fulfill multi-functions, such as the appropriate angle of events and the requirements of readers. Because of hedge’s multi-function in news reports, more researches are conducted in this field, especially from the angle of pragmatics. However, there are inadequate amount of studies about hedge in Chinese-written English news. Therefore, based on previous theoretical and practical researches, establishing Lakoff’s definition and Prince et al’s classification as the overall standards, this present paper studies hedges used in English news texts written by American and Chinese writers. Besides, this paper also concludes similarities and differences of hedges in AEN and CEN and explains hidden reasons, hoping to inspire related learning and studies. In order to attain this purpose, this whole paper is constructed under the following questions.1. What are the frequency and characteristics of hedges employed in AEN and CEN?2. What are the reasons for existence of hedges in English-written news?3. What are the possible reasons for the differences of hedges in AEN and CEN?4. What are the implications of this research?Two self-established corpora are made ready for the researching process. Materials in the corpora are all collected from two mainstream newspapers’websites, namely China daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/) and New York Times (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/). There are four subtypes of news texts, namely business, movie, sports and disaster. The former3topics appear on the homepages of both websites, and articles of the last topic are searched under the key words "earthquake" or "flood". Each corpus consists of40articles, including19397words and22312words respectively. According to Lakoff’s definition and Price et al’s classification, the four types of hedges in these texts are identified and recorded in a table. Then, the search software named AntConc is used to number the frequency of each hedging device throughout the corpora, but it only counts the form without considering function in usage. So the last step needs manual work to exclude non-hedging functions words or expressions. Through data collection and organization, the frequency of hedges appearing in CEN and AEN is numbered, based on which quantitative and qualitative studies are conducted to reveal the similarities and differences of hedges in two corpora. Hedges’overall percentage in each corpus are almost the same, taking up3.11%in AEN and3.24%in CEN. Counting from bottom to top, the proportion of4kinds of hedges in AEN and CEN resembles each other, namely attributor shields-rounders-adaptors--plausibility shields. Compared with similarities, the differences are much more salient. Firstly, the use of hedges is more flexible and richer in AEN than in CEN. Secondly, the preference of hedges is totally different in two corpora. For example, the most frequently used hedge in CEN is "say" or "said". After summarizing features of hedges in AEN and CEN, the author attempts to uncover the hidden reasons of existence of hedges in news and above-mentioned differences. These reasons span widely from cultural background, ideology, core values, and journalism values to proficiency of English and awareness of hedge. Except for direct results of this research, this paper also brings enlightenments to related studies. English news writers and learners should raise their abilities of comprehending and employing hedges in real contexts, so as to make idiomatic expressions. English news translators should explore imlpicatures behind literal meanings, attaining similar reactions in target language readers.This paper includes five chapters. Chapter one introduces the whole paper generally. It includes the origin of the paper, significance and objectivity of the paper, and organization of the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review, which presents the previous study of fuzzy language and definition and classification of hedges at home and abroad. Chapter three describes the detailed process of this research. Chapter four is the data analysis. It views the similarities and differences of hedges employed in CEN and AEN from the macroscopic and microscopic prospective respectively. Chapter five is the general summarization of the thesis. It consists of major findings, limitations of the present paper. Suggestions for the future study concerned hedges are also pointed out at the end of the paper.
Keywords/Search Tags:hedges, news, corpus, comparative analysis
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