简洁性Analysis of Hedges and Their Pragmatic Functions in News

Analysis of Hedges and Their Pragmatic Functions in

N ew s

摘要模糊限制语是现实世界中的语言现象。新闻中使用模糊限制语是其准确性、简洁性、时效性等决定的。对BBC和NYT上的语料分析笔者研究得出其语用功能增强准确性保持灵活性和提高可信度。

关键词模糊语新闻语用功能

1.Introduction Fuzziness is the nature of language and hedging is a crucial partof fuzzy language.G.Lakoff 1972 first studies the fuzzy words in the field oflinguistics and his focus is on the logical properties of hedges in their ability“to makethings fuzzier or less fuzzy”.He also suggests that hedges are words whose job is tomake things fuzzier or les s fuzzy quoted from He Zi-ran 2003 141.Now manyscholars start to inquire into the application of hedges in all kinds of genres but theresearch findings of hedges in English news are not quite persuasive from pragmatics.Therefore the writer explores the pragmatic functions of hedges in the onlinematerials from BBC and New York Times by contextual analysis of the hedges to sumup their pragmatic functions and to make the readers understand the hedged sentence.From the above mentioned it can be concluded that hedging referring to thosewords and expressions making things fuzzier or less fuzzy is a linguistic device toencode the speaker’ s degree of commitment to the truth condition.

2.Pragmatic Classification of Hedges Prince divides hedges into two types fromthe pragmatic view approximators and shields.Approximators can be furtherclassified into adaptors and rounders while shields cover plausibility shields andattribution shields as their own subordinate members Dong Chan 

2006 .Approximators affect the truth conditions o f the propositions associated withthem but not the speaker’s commitment He Zi-ran 2003 142 .This type ofhedges also can change or even cancel the original meaning.One is adaptors whichcan change the degree of truth condition of the statement including sort ofsomewhat commonly etc.The other type o f approximators is rounders whichgive a certain range to a propos ition.There are rounders such as around roughlyetc. .Shields do not affect the truth conditions of the propositions.With plausibilityshields speaker/writer makes his direct estimation or shows his hesitation towardsthe event such as I think probably as far as I can etc.Attribution shields areused to express the attitude of guess or doubt that is stated by a third person thoughthe writer also agrees with the same idea such as presumably someone says that.

3.Characteristics of News Truthfulness and accuracy are the key elements innews and are essential for the information conveying.These require the pressman toreport the facts accurately and objectively. Then news information also needs