A Contrastive Study On Lexical Hedges In English Argumentative Essays Written By L1 And L2 English Speakers

The present thesis conducts a corpus-based study to contrast the use of lexical hedging devices in argumentative essays written by English major students in Chinese university and by native English-speaking university students to find the differences.Since Lakoff(1973)formulated the term hedges,researchers have probed into the use of them from different perspectives ranging from semantics,psycholinguistics,sociolinguistics,discourse analysis to pragmatics.The universality and significance of hedges merit further researches on the use of hedges by English majors in Chinese universities.This study aims to answer the following research questions: 1)How frequently are hedges used in English argumentative essays written by English major students in Chinese universities and native English-speaking university students? 2)What are the differences in the distribution and pragmatic functions of hedges between the two groups? 3)What are the reasons for such differences?Two sub-corpora are generated based on the corpus LOCNESS and the corpus WECCL with three variables under control(language proficiency of students,writing genre and time limit of writing): untimed English argumentative essays written by native English-speaking university students(LOCNESS-ns)as well as written by English major grade 3,4 students in Chinese universities(WECCL-ss).As for the hedging devices,in this study 20 of them are chosen.They are classified into four categories according to Hyland(1996a): modal verbs,epistemic lexical verbs,epistemic adjectives and epistemic adverbs.Major findings of the study are as follows.In general,significant differences are observed in the use of lexical hedges in argumentative essays written by English major students in Chinese universities and by native English-speaking university students.Firstly,in terms of frequency,significant differences exist in the frequency of using 14 hedges and three types of hedges(except epistemic adjectives)betweenEnglish majors in Chinese universities and native English-speaking university students.Secondly,distributions of hedges between English majors in Chinese universities and native English-speaking university students are similar except several hedges.Thirdly,differences in performing accuracy-oriented and writer-oriented functions between these two groups of students are significant.Then,according to these finding,several conclusions are drawn: Firstly,it is most difficult for English majors in Chinese universities to use would/wouldn't and think normatively and fluently in their argumentative writings.In the aspect of types of hedges,it is more difficult for English majors in Chinese universities to use modal verbs and epistemic adverbs normatively and fluently.Actually,it is easy for them to master the normative usage of epistemic adjectives.Secondly,English majors in Chinese universities should use more writer-oriented hedges and fewer accuracy-oriented hedges in their argumentative writings.Thirdly,the thesis verifies the fact that the higher English major students' language proficiency is,the more accurate they are in using hedges by quantitative analysis.Finally,this study explores the possible causes of such differences.They are language proficiency,language transfer,teaching-induced factors and essay topics/prompts.