A Contrastive Analysis Of Use Of Hedges In English Disaster News Written By Chinese,American And Japanese Writers

Hedges,as a typical vague language,have taken great interest in researchers at home and abroad from various perspectives.Based on previous studies on use of hedges in different genres,this study aims to explore the use of hedges in disaster news written by Chinese,American and Japanese writers.E.F.Price Classification is the most influential model,which divides hedges into four types,that is,adaptors,rounders,plausibility shields and attribution shields.Guided by Lakoff's definition of hedges and E.F.Prince's classification,this study employs a qualitative and quantitative method to analyze the frequency,distribution and preference of four types of hedges used in disaster news.Three corpora consisting of 45 disaster news written by American,Chinese and Japanese writers are established to carries out the contrastive analysis.This study aims to answer the three following questions:1.What are the similarities and differences of frequency of hedges in disaster English news?2.What are the possible reasons for the differences of hedges in English disaster news?3.What are the pragmatic functions of hedges in English disaster news?After descriptive and interpretative analysis,there are some findings: in terms of similarities of use of hedges,all four types of hedges are involved in disaster news from three websites,which are in a similar proportion.That is,adaptors,rounders,plausibility shields and attribution shields account for 22.97%,34.31%,7.9%,and34.3% respectively in American news;account for 18.96%,27.62%,6.8% and 45.48%respectively in Chinese news;account for 20.55%,31.13%,6.3% and 41.91% in Japanese news.It is found that attribution shields are the most frequently used in disaster news,followed by rounders,then adaptors,plausibility shields are the least used in news,which is in a descending order.In terms of differences of use of hedges,different types of hedges are employed in various way in each corpus,its number,frequency,preference are totally different.Firstly,the number of hedges in American news is much more than Chinese and Japanese news,while,Chinese news is the second,the last is Japanese news.Secondly,American writers use rounders and plausibility shields more flexibly than Chinese and Japanese writers,while,Chinese news and Japanese news are poor in use of rounders and plausibility shields.Thirdly,personal opinions are often cited to state condition of the disaster in American and Japanese news,while,authoritative views are often used in Chinese news.In the end,it is important for editors to have command of specific usages of hedges,in order to state the disaster more accurate and objective;it is significant for ESL learners to know the use of hedges for better second language acquisition and cross-cultural communication.