On Hedging and Hedging in Review Articles.pdf

1、Fuzzy linguistics is a new science generated through combination of fuzzy-settheory and modern linguistics, study of which is of great significance to exploration ofmany other fields, such as artificial intelligence. Hed

2、ging, as a part of fuzzylinguistics, is an area that awaits much further research.Based on the various definitions ofhedging put forward by investigators, this paperproposes a new definition for hedging from the point of

3、 view of pragmatics. A newtaxonomy of hedging is also suggested.The present research investigates the forms, frequencies and functions of hedgingin review articles. Firstly, hedging devices are identified and counted in

4、the corpus ofEnglish review articles. It is found that hedging is an essential part of language inreview writing. A number of lexical and non-lexical hedging devices occur in reviewarticles. Then detailed analyses are ma

5、de of how hedging is realized through thoselexical and non-lexical devices with support of instances taken from the corpus.Thirdly, the major communicative functions of hedging in review articles arediscussed. The result

6、 reveals that hedging performs both textual and interpersonalcommunicative functions. It is a politeness or face-saving strategy and a selfprotective strategy as well. Finally, a brief comparative study is conducted betw

7、eenChinese review articles and English ones to investigate whether the findings andinsights of the research could provide some valuable implications for review writingin China. It is found that hedging strategies are far