An Analysis Of Hedges In English News Reports From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Vagueness is the property of natural language, and vague language is widely pervasive in communication. In1972, L. A Zadeh, the American mathematician, delivered his paper A Fuzzy-set-Theoretic Interpretation of Linguistic Hedges to introduce the fuzzy set. Based on his theory, more and more foreign and domestic scholars began to explore fuzzy phenomenon. But the linguistic term hedge was first introduced by an American linguist G. Lakoff in1972. In his thesis Hedge: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts, he defined hedges as “words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy”. Chinese scholars represented by Wu Tieping and He Ziran began to study on fuzzy linguistics since the1980s. No matter in China or in foreign countries, the exploration of hedges is mainly focused on the perspective of Leech’s Politeness and Grice’s Cooperative Principle, but seldom on Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, let alone the study of it in English news reports.News reports are the carriers of the facts, and thus the first requirement of news language is accuracy. However, it does not mean that vagueness and accuracy are incompatible. In fact, there are a large number of hedges in news reports. The study of hedges in news reports from the perspective of pragmatic still has a long way to go. The motivation and function of hedges in English news reports are explainable from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. In Understanding Pragmatics, Verschueren studies on pragmatics from a brand new angle. Language use is a process of making choice, which depends on the three properties of language: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Variability of language is the possible range for choice-making. As a prerequisite, variability establishes a physical foundation for the realization of negotiability and adaptability. Negotiability enables language users to choose the appropriate linguistic form intentionally from the range of possibilities after negotiating for meeting certain communicative purposes. Adaptability makes sure that the negotiated linguistic choices to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs. The three properties of language are fundamentally indispensible to constitute the basic elements in language. Variability provides choice-making with the range of possibilities, and negotiation with means. Based on these two properties of language, adaptability, as the purpose and result, makes appropriate choices to meet communicative needs within the possible range of linguistic forms, and then intra-lingual communication can fulfilled smoothly.This thesis consists of three parts: an introduction, the body part and a conclusion.The first part is the introduction to the thesis, which elaborates the hedge study both at home and abroad, and introduces Adaptation Theory. On one hand, relatively few analyses of hedges are conducted from the perspective of Adaptation Theory at home; On the other hand, the author has found that Adaptation Theory not only analyzes hedges in English news reports from a brand new angle, but also gives a good explanation for them.The second part is the main body of the whole thesis, which consists of four chapters.Chapter One is literature review. Firstly, the detailed illustration of Adaptation Theory is provided. It studies on pragmatics from a totally new perspective, which distinguishes itself from the other linguistic theories. According to Verschueren, language use is a process of making choices. The intrinsic properties of language, namely, variability, negotiability and adaptability can explain the reason why people are able to make appropriate linguistic choices. Secondly, significant classifications of hedges both at home and abroad are introduced. On the whole, the study of hedges shifts its angle from semantics to pragmatics. And this thesis focuses the study on hedges in English news reports based on the newly theory—Adaptation Theory. The scholars both abroad and at home failed to reach on an agreement on the classification of hedges. Therefore, based mainly on Prince’s classification of hedges, the author tries to reclassify hedges in detail for the further study in this thesis, which will be presented with examples selected in The Washington Post in the third section.Chapter Two analyzes hedges as a means of adaptation to the physical world. Based on the three features of news reports, the author tries to summarize three ways how hedges are adapted when choosing hedges in news reports, namely, authenticity-driven adaptation, objectivity-oriented adaptation and time-limited adaptation, and it turns out that the three features can be better fulfilled with hedges.Chapter Three analyzes hedges as a means of adaptation to the mental world, which includes both journalists’ mental world and readers’ mental world. As the inter-person between events and news reports, journalists sometimes may process or refine events into news reports for readers. And readers, as the consumers, do not receive news reports passively, but rather influence English news reports to some extent. Thus, readers’ mental world cannot be neglected.Chapter Four analyzes hedges as a means of adaptation to the social world, which is summarized into different cultures and social relations. America is a multi-nationality country, and in order to respect and adapt to different cultures, to avoid taboos, and to reduce potential troubles, hedges are wise choices. And also hedges are intelligent devices to adapt to different social groups.The third part is the conclusion. The thesis concludes that hedges are pervasive in English news reports, and are result of adapting to the physical world, the mental world and the social world. In addition, hedges of quantity are the most favored type of hedges in English news reports, while hedges of confinement and assurement are seldom employed. However, limitations in this thesis cannot be omitted. Firstly, the thesis only deals with examples selected randomly from The Washington Post. Secondly, the author’s classification of hedges is far from satisfying, and overlapping of some words cannot be solved, for the complexity of hedges and the limited capability of the author. Lastly, the thesis focuses on the positive effects of hedges in English news reports, no mention of the negative ones.