摘要

模糊限制语，是现实世界中的常规语言现象，因其在各种文体中的广泛运用，越来越受到学者们的关注。模糊限制语指“一些把事物弄得模模糊糊的词语”，是一种语言机制，用于表明说话者/作者对其陈述的真值的承诺程度。新闻报道中使用模糊限制语，这是新闻报道写作所强调的准确性、简洁性、时效性等特点所决定的。本文基于前人的研究及BBC和New York Times上的新闻语料，笔者分析了模糊限制语的语义特征，新闻报道的特点和模糊限制语在新闻报道中的使用，讨论得出模糊限制语在新闻报道中的语用功能：增强表达的准确性；保持灵活性和提高新闻的可信度。

关键词：模糊限制语；新闻；语用功能

Abstract

Hedges, as a common language phenomenon across the world, now have gained an increasing attention of the public for its wide application in all kinds of genres. Hedges, referring to those words and expressions making things fuzzier or less fuzzy, are regarded as a linguistic device to encode the speaker/writer’s degree of commitment to the truth of his proposition. It is up to the characteristics of accuracy, conciseness and timeliness that the hedges are used in the news English when it is edited. In this thesis, based on the previous studies and language materials from BBC and New York Times, the writer exerts to analyze the semantic features of hedges, the characteristics of news report and the use of hedges in news report, and makes a conclusion that hedges have three pragmatic functions in news report, which are achieving accuracy of expression, improving flexibility and enhancing credibility.

Key words: hedge; news report; pragmatic function

1    Introduction

Fuzziness is the nature of language, and hedging is a crucial part of fuzzy language. In our daily life, the use of hedges is a common linguistic phenomenon in intercourse. From 1970s, the linguists study the hedges from the perspective of semantics. In the next decade, the topic has turned to the exploration of social linguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis. In recent years, the direction moves away from extensive research to specific genres, such as academic and scientific papers, news, business negotiation, diplomacy, advertising, and language teaching and other practical text. Many of them have accomplished lots of prominent achievements from different perspectives. Here, the writer will introduce some scholars’ findings.