Translated Abstract
Hedges as a linguistic term was first proposed by Lakoff (1972), who defined hedges as ‘expressions whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy’. This definition is directly related to the fuzzy-set theory proposed by Zadeh (1965). According to this theory, it is not always easy to determine the borderline between two objects. This greatly challenges the classical sets, which only allows two degrees of membership, i.e. an object either belongs to a category or it does not. In other words, the borderline between two objects is clear-cut. Fuzzy-set theory serves as the basis for the studies of vague language in general and the studies of hedging in particular as we can see from Lakoff’s definition of hedges. Lakoff study hedges from a semantic point of view and his inspiration of hedges comes partly from the prototype theory proposed by Rosch, later studies, however, turn hedges into a pragmatic concept. For scholars in the field of pragmatics and discourse analysis, hedging (the action of using hedges) refers to ‘the textual strategies of using linguistic mean as hedges in a certain context for specific communicative purposes’ (Schroder, H. & Zimmer, D., 1997, p.195). Speakers (writers) use hedges to mitigate and soften the force of their utterances (Nikula, T., 1997, p.188). Vagueness in language, of which hedging is a subtype, as almost every researcher would agree now, is not a bad thing. Besides, latest findings in applied linguistics suggest that hedging use in fields like scientific academic writings is a universal practice rather an occasional phenomenon. It is believed that the use of hedges is related to the claims of knowledge. When the author has made some findings in his research and decides to report them in the writing, he is likely to fear that his findings may threaten the face of other researchers and that his own face might be also threatened if his findings turn out to be wrong later on. Lots of researches have been devoted to the hedging phenomenon in scientific academic writings, e.g. Meyers (1989) and Hyland (1994/1996), news reports, e.g. Cheng Hong (1988) and Ran Yongping (1996) and political discourse, e.g. Chen Zhiwei (2005), but we can find few studies done on hedging in history writings. This might be due to the fact that history texts, which are supposed to be objective and impartial, are not expected to employ hedges (which are taken as uncertainty markers) often. Quite on the contrary, history texts like any other types of texts do put forward claims of their own and modify their claims by using hedges from time to time. The current research investigates the hedging phenomenon in history texts. The researcher does so by comparing two books on Chinese history, one written in the English language, the other in Chinese. We hope to obtain a general idea whether the Chinese language and English language use hedges with any difference. It is assumed that the two texts, with their different background, should employ hedging strategies quite differently, even though they are writing about the same subject matter (i.e. Chinese history). Different researchers may suggest their own classifications of hedges, depending on what rationale they adopt and what types of writing they study. Some researchers focus more on formal features of hedges some others may focus on the function aspects of hedges. The use of hedges is also directly related to the genres where they occur. Informal expressions such as sort of, kind of, which are mainly used in conversations, for example, will not probably occur in formal texts like academic writings. With this mind, the author decides to focus on those hedges that typically occur in history texts. Generally speaking, history texts have to deal with numbers, dates, to report ideas and to attribute source of knowledge. The author’s taxonomy of hedges, more or less structurally-based, thus includes rounders, adaptors, modal expressions (modal verbs/adverbs/adjectives/noun) and evidentials. With the help of two analysis tools of AntConc 3.0.1and TextPro 5.o and computing software SPSS, the author researches on the use of these four types of hedges in the English and Chinese history texts. The author attempts to answer three questions within this study, namely, a) the characteristics of hedging in history texts as a whole b) the differences between hedging use in the English and Chinese texts and c) the causes for these differences. The results of comparison show that like in any other types of writings, hedging is an important feature in the two texts. The author finds more hedges in the English text than in the Chinese text. Analyzing the functions of each type of hedges, the author finds that that hedges as a totality can serve as a tool to protect oneself as a device to hide one’s opinion as involvement markers and as uncertainty markers. The use of hedges makes the text more tentative and less direct. The fact hedges in the English text outnumber the hedges in the Chinese text, therefore, can be considered as a indication that the English text is more objective than the Chinese one. The causes for the differences in the use of English and Chinese hedges are three-folded, if we turn to the register theory proposed by Halliday. The authors of the two texts have different degrees of familiarity with historical facts. The English text uses more uncertainty markers, because its author, as a foreigner, may not be clear about the exact information all the time. Secondly, the two texts have different writer-reader relationship: the author of the English text, as an outsider of the history, tends to be more objective the author of the Chinese text, as an insider of the history, is more likely to be subjective. Finally, linguistic differences, i.e. the difference between the English and Chinese language, also play a part in shaping these differences.Authors of history writings may incorporate different ideologies and ideas in their works, which in turn are reflected vie some textual strategies, hedging being one of them. The results of the research can help us to understand shaping factors in history writings better. The current research is not without limitations. Definitely, the findings based on the comparison between the two books can not be generalized to all history texts without further researches. The current research can only be seen as a starting point for the future researches and it aims only to provide a workable research framework. The corpora need to be expanded in their future research. Besides, more types of hedges should be investigated.
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