An Analysis Of Pragmatic Functions Of The Hedges Based On The Adaptation Theory

Vagueness is a basic feature of language. Hedge is a typical member of vague language, which was first put forward by Lakoff in 1972. He (1972:183-228) points out that "hedges are the words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy". Many scholars have studied hedges since it was pointed out. But the author finds that many scholars in the previous researches mainly studied the hedges in advertisements, news reporting, law and political documents. There are few researches on the hedges in literature. Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece in foreign literature, which has been studied by a lot of researchers, but the previous researches on Gone with the Wind mainly focus on the characters. Few scholars paid attention to the hedges in it. Thus this thesis will select some conversations from Gone with the Wind as research data and analyze the hedges from a new perspective focusing on the pragmatic functions of the hedges selected from Gone with the Wind. Verschueren put forward the Adaptation Theory in his Pragmatics in 1999. The adaptation theory is different from the traditional pragmatic theories. Taking the cognitive, social and cultural factors into consideration, the Adaptation Theory provides a totally new and a more comprehensive angle for hedging study. The adaptation theory regards the process of language using as a process of choosing. The language users make choices continually when communicating in order to achieve the communicating goal.There are three research questions in this thesis:(1) Which kind of hedges are mainly used in the conversations from the novel Gone with the Wind? (2) How do these hedges adapt to the mental world, social world and the physical world of the language users? (3) What pragmatic functions do they have? The author adopts the quantitative method and qualitative method to analyze the hedges in Gone with the Wind with the classification of Prince and his colleges. The quantitative analysis shows us that hedges are widely used in the novel Gone with the Wind, and the percentage of each kind of hedges is different. The qualitative analysis shows that the hedges in the conversations have important pragmatic functions, such as being cooperative, protecting oneself, being polite and avoiding threatening others’face. And the result shows that the use of hedges in Gone with the Wind is the result of adapting to the context.This research has the theoretical and practical significance. The theoretical significance includes:(1) To provide basis for hedging study from the perspective of adaptation theory. (2) To add a case for studying the hedges in literature. (3) The author wants to improve readers’literature appreciation ability. The practical significance is to improve English scholars’awareness of hedges and their pragmatic functions. Using hedges properly can make a difference in cross-cultural communicating and language teaching.