摘要
The editorials of the opinion column in a newspaper express the view of its editors. The application of hedging devices isemployed, in order to support the writers' writing. In this study, the data were gathered from 15 editorials in the opinion column ofChina Daily: 5 editorials are about world issues, the other 5 editorials about Chinese social life, and the last 5 editorials are the edu-cational issues popularly discussed in China. The categorization of hedging devices draws from salvager-Meyer's paper Hedges and Textual Communicative Function in Medical English Written Discourse(1994, p. 154) and Mojica(2005, p. 3). Results revealed thatmost writers of the editorials opted to use approximators and modals. Furthermore, the hedging devices used in the selected editori-als on China Daily mainly had three functions: Show respects of the people or organization or in order for protection; in order to pub-lish timely; and make the prediction more reliable. In general, the Chinese writers seem to be conscious to use hedges appropriatelyin order to make their writing more reliable and avoid some arguments or disparagement.
The editorials of the opinion column in a newspaper express the view of its editors. The application of hedging devices is employed, in order to support the writers' writing. In this study, the data were gathered from 15 editorials in the opinion column of China Daily: 5 editorials are about world issues, the other 5 editorials about Chinese social life, and the last 5 editorials are the educational issues popularly discussed in China. The categorization of hedging devices draws from salvager-Meyers paper Hedges and Textual Communicative Function in Medical English Written Discourse(1994, p. 154) and Mojica(2005, p. 3). Results revealed that most writers of the editorials opted to use approximators and modals. Furthermore, the hedging devices used in the selected editorials on China Daily mainly had three functions: Show respects of the people or organization or in order for protection; in order to publish timely; and make the prediction more reliable. In general, the Chinese writers seem to be conscious to use hedges appropriately in order to make their writing more reliable and avoid some arguments or disparagement.
作者
刘善榕
LIU Shan-rong(English Department,Xiamen Institute of Techonolgy,Xiamen 361021,China)
出处
《海外英语》
2019年第4期131-133,共3页
Overseas English
