On Restrictive Factors Of Hedges From Interpersonal Meaning Perspective

Hedges as the marginal phenomenon in linguistics are the hot topic in the application of language in our daily life.The paper focuses on the study on the restrictive factors of hedges from the interpersonal meaning perspective which aims to explain the reason why people tend to choose certain kind of hedges in various materials. There are three research questions: 1.What’s the restrictive factors of hedges from interpersonal meaning perspective? 2.Why do the restrictive factors constrain the choice of hedges? 3.How does the ranking of the restrictive factors constrain the choice of hedges in practice? This paper firstly aims to explore the factors affecting the selection of hedges based on the analysis of various materials in our daily life from the interpersonal meaning perspective. Secondly, from the three restrictive factors according to the analysis, the paper discusses the sequence of the restrictive factors of hedges inspired by the constraint conditions of Optimality Theory. Then the paper would apply the ranking of the restrictive factors to the cases in our daily life in return. And there are two main theories applied in the paper. The first one is the interpersonal meaning theory based on which the paper constructed. The second one is the constraint conditions of Optimality Theory inspired by which the ranking of the restrictive factors of hedges could be set.This paper mainly takes the methodology of literature research, observation and descriptive research. The target of the research aims to explore the restrictive factors of the hedges from interpersonal meaning perspective, which affect the selection of hedges. What’s more, the paper attempts to rank the three restrictive factors of hedges so as to apply the restrictive factors in practice.The main creativity of the paper is the interpersonal meaning in systematic and functional grammar and the attempting of setting the ranking of the restrictive factors of hedges inspired by the constraint conditions of OT.The conclusion is that there are factors affecting the selection of hedges and there are rankings that constrain these factors affecting the choice of hedges. 1.The restrictive factors are appraisal requirement, interactivity and the cognitive gestalt from the interpersonal meaning perspective. They each corresponds to certain interpersonal function of the hedges. 2.The constraint conditions of the restrictive factors are described as the Appraisal, the Reality and the Relationship. The different ranking of the constraint conditions of the restrictive factors determines the different choice of the hedges and then the different interpersonal function of the hedges. 3.The ranking of the constraint conditions of hedges helps the hearer comprehend the purpose of the speaker and the function of the hedges used.Hedges don’t appear accidentally but are decided by the restrictive factors in context.The result would drop a hint in the application and the comprehension of hedges from the point of both the speaker and the hearer in the hedges context.