Abstract
As a significant member of vague language, hedges play their specific role in various kinds of languages, such as in business discourses, diplomatic negotiations, scientific articles, news reports, advertisements, and legal texts. Political speech, with a special language form between semi-written and semi-oral, is given with its own sophisticated intentions and motivations. As it is ultimately heard and understood by the target audiences in a certain situation, political speech is to a large extend bound to its potential audiences and occasions. Referring only to the pragmatic perspective, this paper examines the basic pragmatic functions of political speeches from the perspective of fuzzy linguistics and proves the universality and necessity to use hedges in political speeches, on the base of analyzing the latest speeches given by American famous politician. The author hopes this study will enhance people’s awareness of the pragmatic functions of hedges in political speeches through this research.
Keywords   hedges   political speech   discourse analysis 

近年来,针对模糊限制语的研究取得了长足的发展, 涉及到不同领域不同体裁,如商业演说、外交谈判、科学文献、新闻报道、广告宣传及法律文书等。政治演讲作为一种特殊的政治语篇,有其特殊的语言特点,即一种介于书面和口语之间的语言形式。这赋予了演讲本身更为复杂的目的和动机。政治演讲要在某个特定情形下把有效信息传达给听众并得到理解和信任,因此政治演说的最终效果在很大程度上受限于潜在的观众和特定的场合。本文仅从语用学角度对模糊限制语进行语篇分析。作者选取了20篇著名美国政治家的演讲作为研究对象,希望通过对模糊限制语在英文政治演说中的特点及语用功能的研究,将增强人们对模糊限制语在政治演讲中的语用功能的意识。
关键词   模糊限制语   政治演讲   语篇分析 

Vague language, in different sectors, has been the key research subjects in recent years. Vagueness is a natural phenomenon existing in all aspects of the natural world. Hence it is believed that vagueness, ambiguity and imprecision are to be avoided (Channell, 2000). Hedge, by its definition, is thought as a word or phrase that brings fuzziness. As a significant member of vague language, hedges play their specific role in various kinds of languages, such as in business discourses, diplomatic negotiations, scientific articles, news reports, advertisements, and legal texts.