A Pragmatic Study On The Hedges In The Consecutive Interpreting Of The Chinese Premiers' Press Conferences

As a part of vague language,the hedges have gained the popularity among the scholars from home and abroad for a long time.Numerous scholars have achieved much progress in terms of delving into the hedges in various fields from the perspectives of semantics,pragmatics and discourse.However,few studies regarding to the hedges in diplomatic setting have been found,the current studies focus on the comparative study of the hedges between the Chinese and English diplomatic speeches than the study of the hedges in the Premiers' Press Conferences from the pragmatic perspective.According to the classification of the hedges raised by Prince in 1982,this paper is designed to adopt the qualitative method to study the hedges in the Premiers' Press Conferences from pragmatic perspective based on the live videos and the field interpreting transcripts of Premiers' Press Conferences from 2012 to 2016 in a way to zero in on how the interpreters interpret and mediate the hedges and to clarify what purposes or goals that the interpreters want to achieve.This paper employed the skopos theory as the theoretical framework to further the study of the hedges in the Premiers' Press Conferences and to comprehend the goals and purposes of the interpreters in mediating or interpreting the hedges.The author of this paper has found that the interpretation devices like amplification,replacement and omission were mainly utilized by the interpreters to mediate the hedges so as to realize the purposes of interpreting in the Premiers' Press Conferences.The appropriate use of the hedges by the interpreters could not only boost the efficacy of expression instead of weakening the accuracy of diplomatic language,but also facilitate the cross-cultural communication and realize the delivery of Chinese voice and stance.Meanwhile,the proper use of the hedges by the interpreters could present the courtesy,highlight the diplomatic protocol and avoid the embarrassment,conflict and potential risk in the diplomatic setting.This study could be a reference for the learners and the researchers who delve into the hedges in a way to comprehend the application characteristics of the hedges in the Premiers' Press Conferences,which is also beneficial to the teaching and interpreting of diplomatic discourse.This present thesis could be crystallized into six parts.They are the introduction,literature review,theoretical framework,research methodology,case analysis and the conclusions respectively.