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The Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in American Web News

Author: ZuoFan
Tutor: JinQiJun
School: Northeastern University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Fuzziness Hedges American News English Cooperative Principle Conversational Implicature
CLC: H313
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2009
Downloads: 79
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Abstract


Hedges, as a part of Fuzzy language, which is common used in the social life and communication. Therefore, Fuzzy linguistics have been carried out from different aspects by a lot of scholars, such as Zadeh, Lakoff, Brown, Levinson, Myers and Hyland of western countries, Wu Tieping, He Ziran and Zhang Qiao in China. In recent years, great progress has been made in analyzing the application of hedges in language of different styles.As a mass medium, news deeply influences people’s life, and American journalistic English, News English is a special form of language and has its own features. The use of hedges in American news English reflects the accuracy of news reports and has unique functions with the theories of pragmatics. According to the investigation of The Gallup Poll in 2004, the experts found that the rate of achieving news on web is increased 5%, and the number will continuously rise. So it is significant to analysis the hedges in American web news.In this paper, the author first gives a brief introduction to the general development of the fuzzy semantics in the world and situation of the hedges study and significance of the present research. Chapter one introduces the basic definition of Fuzzy language and some valuable research results of foreign and domestic Fuzzy linguistics.In the following chapter, the author then redefines the concepts of the Fuzzy and the hedge distinguishes several concepts confused easily and analyzes their relationship, reviews the studies of Fuzzy linguistics and hedges. And in the meanwhile, the author found several examples of American news on the website.Hedges first gained attention in the field of semantics, but more and more scholars and researchers are switching the focus of the study to the field of pragmatics. Hedging research in pragmatics is mainly discourse-oriented. The pragmatic functions of hedges in news reflect by using the Co-operative Principle of Cirice’s Conversational implicature Theory and Politeness Principle. According to this principle, speakers try to send understandable communicative messages within the context of any particular conversation, and hearers assume that speakers are doing this. According to the function of cancellability, the hedges may weaken or cancel the truth value of a proposition in a piece of news. This relieves the reporter from taking the responsibility for the false or untrue news. The hedges may increase the credibility of news reports; avoid giving details in reporting; protect the reporter from giving false information; achieve politeness.The paper anal sizes pragmatic functions of hedges with numerous examples. By comparison between the sentences with hedges and without them, it shows that hedges contain their special pragmatic functions that shouldn’t be ignored and the study on it bears tremendous pragmatic significance.The news examples are selected in the study are written ones from the web sites CNN ABC and CBS on line. (http://cnn.com and http://abcnews.go.com and http://www.cbsnews.com/), not including the news in printed newspapers, magazines and that on TV or radio.As an obvious representation of American "soft power" and one of the most important American cultural industries, American medium has embodied its ideas of typical American ideology, American values and American national interests. The paper tries to analysis the characteristic of American Mass Media to explain how news reflect then affected American culture and common life.

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CLC: > Language, writing > FOREIGN > English > Semantics,vocabulary,semantic
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