e term Hedges and definite it "words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy". In 1975, Lakoff pointed out that some language characters appear more frequently in female utterance than in male's. Then he called this language phenomenon women's language or features. In fact, hedges are one of the distinct charactersamong the women's language or features.
Professor Wu Tiepin launched a paper First Exploration of Vague Language on the forth issue Foreign Language, marking the beginning of vague language in China. Since a number of language linguists have engaged in the study, vague language has become an emerging and frontier science. With the development of fuzzy linguistics at home and abroad, hedges are also stepping into a new stage both in theory and in application. However, although many Chinese linguists do a lot work of the hedges appliances, hedges in female utterance characters are shortage of formation of in-depth and systematic research.
In these years, lots of linguistics are tied up with female from the aspect of hedges. Shui Miao (2008) analyzed the functions of exactness, interpersonal relationship ,flexibility and misconception of gender differences on hedges, and also discussed the reasons of hedges in female utterance. But she failed to connect the practical materials with hedges. Zhang Xiaohui (2009) owes this character to women' low society status, which appears to be far more than to explain this phenomenon completely. Taking the example of Pride and Prejudice, Wang Peng and Sun Feiran (2009) discussed the pragmatic functions and reasons of hedges in female utterance and stated that hedges have interpersonal coordination, dissemblance and protection as well as refinement and courtesy functions. It seems lacking in enough evidence for women frequent use of hedge in practice. If we want to search into the use of hedges in female utterance, the best method is to combine the theory with oral practice.
2. Hedges
2.1 The definition of hedges
As for the definition of hedges, different language linguists have different explanations. The term, hedges, was firstly defined as "words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy" by Lakoff in 1972.The notion of hedges is just some uncertain conception or restrictive phases on the discipline pragmatics and discourse analysis in Cristal's (1997:170) Modern Linguistic Dictionary .Verschueren (1999:193) held the view that hedges limited the prepositional content directly, namely evaluating preposition attitudes, congnition or proof attitudes in the direct way, at the same time showing metapragmatic awareness. Weinreich(1996) called hedges metapragmatic operation language, such as true, real. Yule (1996) defined "the cautious comprehending expression of how are the words understood " in his book Pragmatics, like "as far as I know" ,this word providing certain information for us.
Personally, the author prefers the definition of hedges given by Li Qianju in his book Vague Semantics Introduction: hedges are attached to the clear meaning words or expressions, which can change original, certain conception to vagueness. As a matter of fact, hedges are not only words, phases, but also some composite structure and minor sentence . We can totally call them hedges.
2.2 The classification of hedges
According to different standards, there are a variety
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