Research On The Interpersonal Functions Of Hedges Used In Chinese And American Government Work Report

Fuzziness is a natural property of human language. Like accuracy, it is a significant part of communication. We can say that communication can hardly run smoothly without fuzziness. Hedge, as an important member of fuzzy language, exist in various kinds of linguistic phenomena. In 1970 s, the American linguist Lakoff firstly put forward the term “hedge”. Afterwards, scholars have further conducted many researches on hedges from various aspects. Chinese scholar Wu Tieping was the first person who introduced this theory to China. Then the study of hedges expanded to various fields. However, the research of hedges used in Chinese Government Work Report(hereafter referred as CGR) and State of the Union Address(hereafter referred as SUA) is relatively few, and the study of the interpersonal functions realized by hedges in CGR and SUA is rarer.This study analyzes the interpersonal functions of hedges under the framework of Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, with CGR and SUA from 2011 to 2015 as the research object. According to E.F.Prince et al.'s classification, the hedges in CGR and SUA are categorized into two types: approximators and shields. The qualitative and quantitative methods are applied to analyze the interpersonal functions of hedges used in the corpus.Through a series of qualitative and quantitative researches, the following conclusions can be drawn:(1) Hedges are frequently used in both CGR and SUA. The average percentage of hedges used in CGR and SUA are 19.56‰ and 37.51‰ respectively. Furthermore,approximators are more frequently used than shields in both CGR and SUA.(2) The proper use of hedges achieves similar interpersonal functions in CGR and SUA, such as lightening the tone and avoiding absoluteness, enhancing the preciseness and accuracy, strengthening persuasiveness, being decent, enhancing charisma, enhancing the credibility, relieving responsibility, strengthening objectivity and authority. Through the use of hedges, the addresser can realize his political goals more effectively.(3) The use of different kinds of hedges in CGR and SUA is not the same. In CGR, adaptors is the most frequently used hedges, taking an overwhelmingly majority of 51.28%, about half of all the hedges. However, rounders are the most frequently used hedges in SUA, which account for 49.36%. The different regime and ideology of the two countries can explain this discrepancy.The study of this thesis can help people understand the Government Work Report more objectively and deeply. And at the same time, it can also help English-learners use hedges properly to enhance communicative competence.