A Study On Hedges In Downton Abbey In Light Of Politeness Principle

Fuzziness is the essential characteristic of inartificial language and the widespread phenomenon in human communication. As an indispensable manifestation of fuzzy language, hedges are prevalent and the part they play in helping communicators express their real attitudes should not be neglected. In daily conversations, Communicators use hedges frequently, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without any awareness of hedges. This phenomenon has come into the scope of researchers in linguistic field.In this thesis, the author mainly covers threefold considerations:(1) the basic facets of hedges, which include the definitions, classifications and functions of hedges. (2) Occurrence of different kinds of hedges in this TV series. (3) Different types of hedges’pragmatic function in the frame of Politeness Principle Via the analysis of daily conversations in the famous British TV series Downton Abbey,The thesis analyzes the data sources from the micro-corpus and the corpus has six seasons and 52 episodes. By making use of the software AntConc 3.4.3., the occurrence of different types of hedges can be counted. In the course of the statistical collection, the researcher counts different types of hedges’occurrence.With regard to major findings of this research, there are three aspects.Firstly, hedges can modify the truth values and ranges of utterances. Hedges assist speakers to use other people’s viewpoints for reference. Hedges play a role in making listeners feel comfortable and help speakers avoid taking full responsibilities.Secondly, in Downton Abbey, adaptors has the highest occurrences. The adaptor "very" is spoken for the most times. Attribution shields have the least occurrences. From a pragmatic point of view, the use of hedges by different characters in this British TV series, can accomplish the six maxims proposed by Leech. In daily conversations, the use of hedges does contribute to creating the polite and harmonious communication atmosphere.Thirdly, in Downton Abbey, different characters tend to employ different types of hedges to assist performing the six maxims of Politeness Principle when expressing their feelings and stating their viewpoints. Thus speakers could carry on the conversation easily and harmoniously.Based on the research findings, this thesis intends to provide people who are interested in English some enlightenment in increasing sensitiveness to hedges and improving English communication skills.