1、 I （ 20_ _届） 本科毕业 设计 英语 模糊限制语的语用研究及教学意义 Pragmatic Research and Teaching Significance of Hedges II 摘要 语言的清晰表达和精确应用是语言使用者所追求的理想境界，但模糊语言在整个语言使用中俯拾皆是，很少有人会说他们可以非常精确地用话语或文字来表达自己的想法。人类语言本身就具有模糊性，而本文则主要研究并论述了模糊语言中最普通，最典型的一个部分，即模糊限制语。 模糊限制语作为一种特殊的语言形式 很早就引起了人们的关注。一方面它可以改变句子的真值，另一方面它可以使语言表达变得模糊，使话语显得委婉、得体。本文
2、通过对模糊限制语的意义及语用功能的研究，帮助英语学习者掌握其用法，并提高他们的语用意识，同时也强调其在语言教学中的意义。 关键词： 模糊限制语 ; 语用研究 ; 语用教学 III Abstract The phenomenon of fuzziness has been very frequently seen in language use, although people have always pursued the accuracy and clarity of their expression. Seldom of they will say they can be precise
3、in expressing ideas. As we know, humans language is fuzzy in nature. In this paper, we mainly discuss the most common and typical part in fuzzy language, that is, hedges. As a special kind of language form, hedges have long drawn peoples attention. On the one hand, they can change the truth-value of
4、 the sentence, on the other hand they can make the language expression ambiguous, euphemistic, and decent. The research of this paper, through the studies of the meaning of hedges and pragmatic function, aims to help English learners to master the usage of hedges, and improve their pragmatic conscio
5、usness, but also emphasize the significance in its language teaching. Key words: Hedges; pragmatic analysis; pragmatic teaching IV Contents Abstract . .I 1 Introduction .1 1.1Background information .1 1.2Classification and function of hedges .2 1.2.1Approximators . 2 1.2.2Shields . .3 2 Pragmatic An
6、alysis of Hedges . .4 2.1Hedges and Cooperative Principle . .5 2.2Hedges and Politeness Principle .6 2.3 Hedges and Context . . .7 2.3.1 Hedges in arbitrary context . 7 2.3.2 Hedges in implied context . .8 2.3.3Hedges in fuzzy context .8 3 Pragmatic application of Hedges . 8 3.1 The application of H
7、edges to show politeness . 8 3.2 Refusing to answer the question . .9 3.3 As a device to smooth the communication . 9 3.4Avoiding conflict . . 10 3.5Promoting objectivity . .10 4 Significance of teaching hedges . .11 4.1 Improving English Communicative ability . .11 4.2 Distinguishing between synony
8、m and homoionym 11 4.3Further understanding of cultural differences .12 4.4 Helping to improve the students reading and writing ability .12 5 Conclusion . 12 Bibliography 14 Acknowledgements.15 - 1 - 1 Introduction People have many beliefs about the accuracy of language, while as a matter of fact, l
9、anguage more often than not demonstrates its feature of inaccuracy in daily communication. Sometimes, people prefer to use vague language to convey information. In humans language, many words and expressions with apparently precise meaning or definition often express uncertain concepts, which sugges
10、t an inherent linguistic characteristic of language, that is, fuzziness. 1.1 Background information Fuzziness is one of the essential features of natural language and the phenomena of fuzzy language exist everywhere in our daily life. When people cant make sure what they are saying, they often emplo
11、y fuzzy language to express their opinions on some occasions, and in that way they can make the communication continue smoothly. Lets take some sentences as examples, “ In a sence , he doesnt like that dog” , “ I think it is a little fat”, “His body is very good”. In these sentences, the words or ph
12、rases like “In a sence”, “I think”, “a little”, “very” are all called as hedges in fuzzy language. Although these hedges are significant in communication, fuzzy language as a subject has been paid more attention and studied systematically and formally only more than30 years. And among the components
13、 of fuzzy language, hedges are one of the most typical and active parts that widely exist in verbal and written communication, playing an important role in communication. In 1965, L.Zadeh, a cybemetics professor at the university of California, published an article named Fuzzy Sets in Information an
14、d Control, and firstly proposed fuzzy set theory that was considered as milestone for the innovation of scientific thoughts on fuzzy language and other areas. After that fuzzy set theory was applied to the area of language study and subsequently generated a series of new subjects such as fuzzy lingu
15、istics, fuzzy logic, fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy psychology, ect. From then on, increasing number of scholars in China and aboard began to put their more attention to the study of fuzzy linguistics. In such relevant of fuzzy language, hedges as a new concept was firstly presented in the paper Hedges: A
16、 Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concept in 1972 by a great American scholar Gorge Lakoff, who gives his famous definition for hedges, namely, the words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. And he also points out that hedges can indicate speakers subjective presumption
17、 for the utterance, and modify the truth-value or involved content of the utterance. According to Lakoff, more and more scholars and linguists began to pay their attention to the field of hedges. At the same year, L.Zadeh firstly made use of the new word hedges in his article Fuzzy-set-theoritic Int
18、erpretation of Linguistic Hedges, in which he gave an analysis of - 2 - English hedges from the perspective of semantics and logics. In 1973, Rosch made fundamental prototypes from the perspective of cognition. In 1987, Brown and Levinson from the perspective of pragmatics considered hedges as a dev
19、ice to avoid disagreement and described hedges as a strategy or an expression of negative politeness. In recent years, more and more scholars begin to attach importance to the study of hedges from many aspects. And the main research projects are as follows: (1) application research； (2) translations
20、 and introduction of works and papers about fuzzy language and hedges abroad； (3) theory study on hedges and hedging. From 1979, Wu Tieping published some articles about the fuzziness of language in succession and also reorganized some of theose articles into a bool named Fuzzy Linguistics published
21、 in 1999, in which he gave a classification about hedges from the perspective of semantics. In addition, another scholar He Ziran did the research on hedges application and function in verbal communication in his article Hedges and Verbal Communication . And ZhangQiao also studied hedges from the pe
22、rspective of semantics. 1.2 Classification and function of hedges Hedges can be classified from two aspects of semantics and pragmatics. Some famous scholars including Chad, Lakoff, Prince, Wu Tieping have classified hedges. For example, Chad thought that hedges can be divided into adjectives, adver
23、bs, the words or phrases that speakers say with hesitation and indefiniteness. But what is generally accepted by the public is the classification of Prince after full consideration on hedges with two aspects of pragmatic and semantic features. According to logic-semantic and pragmatic category, Prin
24、ce divided hedges into two types, namely, approximators and shields. 1.2.1 Approximators Approximators belonging to logic-semantic category are those words that can change original meaning. In the communication, the speakers often make use of this kind of limit language to achieve the purpose accord
25、ing to actual situation. In the other words, it can change the truth-value of the discourse. For example: (1) a: A chicken is a bird (close to true) b: A chichen is sort of a bird (true) (Prince et al.1982) If we see carefully, we can easily find that sentence A is false. After adding the hedge “sor
26、t of”, it becomes true. To be specific, approximators have two subdivisions. Please see the following examples: - 3 - (2) He also has a somewhat low interior larynx. (3) M: What about his ears ? Is he still draining fluid? N: Uh, its more just sort of crusted, not really draining. (4)The car hit him
27、 on his left side and as described by his parents, he sort of grazed off the car and fell to the ground. (Prince et al.1982) (5) The price is somewhat higher than I had expected. (6) The homework is more or less finished. (Dong Na:2003) The type of approximators in above example is named Adaptors. T
28、his subclass of approximators is used to make some adaptation to some extent of the propositional meaning so as to make the interpretation more close to the fact. (7) His weight was approximately three point two kilograms, which is essentially what his birth weight was. (8) The babys blood pressure
29、on the ride over here was also about something between forty and fifty palpable. (Prince et al.1982) (9) He hopes to set up an advance camp at around 2000 feet in early July. (10) There is another shop in Blakeheath that is selling really scrawny ones, five or six quid a time. (Yang Ping:2001) The s
30、econd type of approximators illustrated in example is called Rounders. This subclass of approximators is used to give a range or limit the meaning to a certain scope. The terms like “crusted”, “three point two kilograms”, indicate the prototypical situation; While the hedges chosen like “sort of ”,
31、“about”, indicate that the actual situation is very close to but not identical with the prototypical situation. 1.2.2 Shields Shields belonging to pragmatic category, doesnt change the original intention. This kind of hedges just like an illustration added to the discourse to make the communication
32、tone moved towards relaxation. For example: (11) a: A bat is a bird. (false) b: A bat is sort of a bird. (vague) （ Heziran:2002） From the above examples, we can know sentence A doesnt have truth-value condition, - 4 - but after added the hedges “sort of”, it become vague or close to true.( still fal
33、se). The purpose of employing shields is to make speakers comply with the politeness principle, avoid being arbitrary or imposing their ideas to others. As in the case of the approximators, shields also can be divided into two types accordingly. For instance: (12) I think we can probably finish the
34、work before evening? (13) What he said is true, I guess? (prince:1982) This type of shields in above examples is called Plausibility Shields. It could be some words or phrases which indicate the speakers speculate and skeptical attitude to the topic such as I think, as far as I know, probably, wonde
35、r, ect. When the speakers feel less confident on the authenticity of discourse or cant make a conclusion, they usually use these words or phrases to ease the tone of discourse. Another type of shield is called Attribution Shields, which simply attributes the issue in question to someone other than t
36、he speaker. Thus it makes words appear more objective, also avoid taking responsibilities of the inaccurate discourse. For example: (13) According to her estimates, she got the babys high heart rate back within two to three or so? (14) It was said that she would come back next week? (prince et al:19
37、82) From the classification of hedges, we can clearly see the speakers often use different hedges according to the different communicative purpose. Sometimes it will also appear different types of hedges in a same sentence. Moreover, as the function of some hedges is various, it only can be judged a
38、ccording to the type of context. 2 Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges In our daily communication, there are always some occasions on which its difficult for people to explain something clearly. On such occasions, people usually do not show absolute attitudes as exptcted. Instead, they prefer to use hedges
39、 to make their discourse vague. In other words, when they have to express their ideas but its not easy to make correct conclusion, or while they are not sure about something, hedges can help them deal with these occasions effectively as one of the most useful language tool. And in this chapter, we w
40、ill discuss the ways in which speakers and writers use hedges by examinning hedges and their functions through some important theories and factors of pragmatics. - 5 - 2.1 Hedges and Cooperative Principle The Cooperative principle is essentially a theory about the use of language proposed by Grice.
41、He pointed out that to make conversations go on smoothly, the speaker and the hearer must both obey some basic principles, especially cooperative principle. In his mind, people are always willing to be cooperative in literal communication. Then how do they achieve this purpose and how do they cooper
42、ate with each other and carry on the conversation successfully? Grice make the famous definition of cooperative which goes on like this: “ Make your conversational contribution as much as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which yo
43、u are engaged.” Please see the following example: （ 15） A woman is sitting on a bench in a park and a dog is lying on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits down beside the woman. Man: Does your dog bite? Woman: No. The man bowed down to pet the dog and the dog bit him in his h
44、and. Man: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesnt bite. Woman: He doesnt. But thats not my dog (He Ziran:2002) The man took it for granted that the dog lying on the ground belonged to the the woman and thought the woman involved in the conversation should be cooperative. Therefore the man bowed down to
45、pet the dog. However the woman in the conversation didnt provide sufficient information that her dog didnt bite but the dog lying on the ground wasnt hers. Her nonobservance of cooperative principle led to the funny result. So even when we use hedges to make the expression vague in order to have a s
46、oomth talk, we must observe this principle. Moreover, Grice also pointed out four basic maxims of conversation or general principles underlying the efficient cooperative use of language. These four maxims are listed as follows: (i)The Maxim of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true.
47、 a. Do not say what you believe to be false. b. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. (ii) The Maxim of Quantity: a. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange. b. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. - 6 - (iii)The Maxim of Relevant: Make your contributions relevant. (iv) The Maxim of Manner: a. Avoid abscurity. b.Avoid ambiguity. c.Be brief. d.Be orderly. 2.2 Hedges and Politeness Principle In social interactions
