A Study Of The Interpersonal Function Of Hedges

As an important part of vagueness,hedges exist in various linguistic phenomena.Previous studies on hedges of Chinese-English consecutive interpreting(C-E CI)merely focus on coping strategies and semantic function of hedges.Few did research on the interpersonal function of hedges by combining modality system and hedges together.Based on Halliday's systematic functional grammar and American scholar Lakoff and E.F.Prince's definition and classification of hedges,this paper analyzes the interpersonal functions of hedges in C-E CI of the Premier's press conferences from 2013 to 2019 by combining modality and hedges together from the following three aspects:modal operator hedges(MOHs),mood adjuncts hedges(MAHs)hedges and modality metaphor hedges(MHHs).This paper aims to answer the following questions:What are the number and frequencies of MOHs,MAHs and MMHs in the corpus?How are the interpersonal.meanings realized by MOHs and MMHs in the corpus?What interpreting strategies can we learn from C-E CI of Premier Li's press conferences?After reviewing a series of quantitative studies,the following conclusions are drawn:the total number of MOHs in the corpus is far higher than that of MAHs and MMHs,accounting for more than 95%of the aggregate,MMHs only accounting for 5%or so and MAH almost zero.The number of each kind of MOHs is basically the same each year,which indicates that the use of MOHs in C-E CI of the premier's press conferences has a tendency to occur frequently.Within the category of different values of MOHs,median and low value MOHs are in the majority,while high value items are used less.Based on qualitative analysis,this paper further puts forward three coping strategies for interpreting hedges in diplomatic setting:be politically sensitive;remain faithful to vague language;and be flexible in illustrating the essence of hedges.