A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Hedges In Chinese College Students’ Impromptu Speeches-from The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

In impromptu speech, the speaker does not only have to express his personalviewpoints on the given topics, but also deal with the complex interpersonalrelationships with the judges and audiences. Hence, the interpersonal meaning iscomplex and fundamental in impromptu speech. In order to make their arguments moreacceptable and meaningful to the judges and audiences, hedges are extensivelyemployed by the speakers to deal with the complex interpersonal relationships inimpromptu speech.For a long time, Systemic Functional Grammar is considered as a powerful devicefor analyzing interpersonal meaning. However, it only focuses on mood and modalityin realizing interpersonal meaning, which “elides the semantic of evaluation”(WangZhenhua,2001:13). It is then complemented and improved by Appraisal Theorydeveloped by Martin. After the theory is put forward, it is widely used in various textsand regarded as an ideal tool to analyze the interpersonal meaning. Therefore, thispaper will make a detailed analysis to explore the distribution of hedges as differentappraisal resources in impromptu speech and the various interpersonal meanings theyconvey.The study is based on a corpus of50impromptu speeches that are selected from“21stcentury cup” national English speaking competition. All data are subjected to aquantitative and qualitative analysis and the following major findings are made.Hedges are extensively used as engagement resource and graduation resource inimpromptu speech. Engagement resource far outweighs the graduation resource. Theyhave their respective interpersonal meanings. Firstly, by the use of engagementresources, the speakers want to convey that are willing to engage dialogically withothers, either with the same views or with alternatives. Through both dialogicexpansion and contraction, the speakers show the stance of negotiation rather than resistance to form alignment and solidarity with the audiences. Through the use ofhedges as the graduation resources, the speakers can not only express their own stanceabout the propositions, but also can either reinforce the interpersonal strength of theitems they modified to greatly convince the audiences, or mitigating the force of anutterance so it sounded less absolute and more palatable to the audiences.This study provides speakers with insights on how to use hedges in impromptuspeech to achieve their own purpose. The audience, on the other hand, can enjoy andunderstand the speeches much better after they know the interpersonal meaning ofhedges. Through the analysis of hedges in impromptu speech, the present paper canimprove students’ awareness of hedge and make them become familiar with thefeatures and functions of hedges.