Change the authenticity of the text. For example:
1a。 It rained in Shenzhen yesterday.
1b。 It seemed to rain in Shenzhen yesterday.
1a is a clear judgment of the speaker's meaning, but in 1b, due to the appearance of hedges, the speaker's attitude becomes less certain.
2a。 Whales belong to fish.
2b。 I think whales belong to fish.
Here 2a is the judgment that the truth is false, while in 2b, due to the appearance of hedges, the context becomes opaque, and the degree of assertion is weakened, which makes the proposition no longer have the truth condition.
American cybernetic expert Zadeh (1972) divides hedges into two categories. A kind of fuzzy words that directly modify, such as very, very, more or less, light, height, etc. Another function of hedges is to explain how they act on vague words. Such vague words include: essential, technical, strict, certain, practical, fictitious, regular and so on. (quoted by Wu Tieping, 1999: 72)
E.F. Prince et al. (1980: 83-97, quoted from Su Yuanlian, 2002) divide English hedges into two categories and four subcategories:
Adapter (degree change language)
Approximator (variant)
Rounder (Range Change Language)
brush hurdle
Rationality (direct mitigation)
Shield (medium type)
Attribute (indirect mitigation)
Variable hedges can affect the truth condition of propositions, or modify the original words, or give the original words a certain range of changes. This kind of hedges can be divided into different degrees, such as category, order, a little, some, some hats, very, quit, almost, commononly, in a sense, more or less, essential, technically, strictly speaking, in a sense, actually, virtually, words that change regularly and range, such as about, around, approximate, etc. Mild hedges do not change the truth condition of propositions, and their main function is to express the speaker's attitude towards the credibility, detail, relevance and clarity of the information provided in the conversation. Mitigative hedges can be divided into direct mitigation and indirect mitigation. The former is as I think, I guess, I think, I doubt, it's hard to say, as far as I know, it may seem, such as (sb. ) say …, according to …, the possibility will be …, it is said that …, it is believed that … and so on. Meta-pragmatic Awareness Analysis of Hedges
In Verschueren's view, hedges are linguistic elements that directly modify the content of propositions from attitudes, cognition or evidence. (1999: 193) For example:
He is a little crazy.
In a sense, universities are just factories.
He also believes that language users are always monitoring the way they produce or interpret words, and at the same time, they are aware of the eternal necessity of meaning negotiation and the obstacles to this negotiation. (1999: 198) We might as well take the classification of hedges by E. F. Prince as an example to see how meta-pragmatic awareness monitors and negotiates the output or interpretation of discourse through hedges.
Variable hedges
5. Robin is a very good bird.
6. Not strictly speaking, a whale is a kind of fish.
7. His wife is a real spinster.
8. Strictly speaking, bats are not birds.
In Example 5, PAREXCENCE shows the speaker's consciousness as a cognitive attitude, that is, BIRD is a category composed of members with different degrees of category membership. ROBIN is in the center of the category and is a typical category member. In Example 6, loosely speaking,