| Fuzziness is a natural feature of human language and it plays an important role in linguistic communication.Fuzzy theory came into being when Zadeh published Fuzzy Sets in 1965,but it did not get widely accepted by scholars until the publication of G.Lakoff’s Hedges:A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts in 1972.In his book,Lakoff first put forward the term "hedges".Financial Stability Report is a significant publication issued by economic entities,and it aims to analyze the developing trend and potential problems of the financial market.It plays a significant role in maintaining financial stability.Based on Lakoff’s(1972)definition and Hyland’s(1998)classification of hedges,the present study conducts both quantitative and qualitative analyses in a comparative approach,aiming to find out similarities and differences in the use of hedges between the two self-compiled corpora,explores possible reasons for the differences and discusses the functions and features of hedges in financial stability reports.The results show that the occurrence of lexical hedges in Global Financial Stability Reports is more frequent than that in China Financial Stability Reports.Meanwhile,there is a significant difference in the use of hedges between the two self-complied corpora.In the two corpora,the most and least frequently used hedges are modal verbs and epistemic nouns respectively;but there are differences in the use of epistemic adjectives,verbs and adverbs.Possible factors like cultural influence and complexity of hedges leading to these differences are discussed,and functions and features of hedges in financial stability reports are explored as well.Besides,this research also provides some reference for Chinese English learners to better understand the use of hedges in official documents at home and abroad. |
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