论文答辩中的遁言运用和情态表达——基于学术口语语料库的分析

Hedging and Modality in English Dissertation Defenses——A Study Based on Corpus of Academic Spoken English

遁言是学术英语文体中一个重要的语言应用现象,有关英语学术论文写作中的遁言现象已经有很多的研究。本文选用学术英语口语语料库中两篇不同学科的博士论文答辩语料作为研究对象,旨在分析英语论文答辩这种特殊学术环境下答辩者运用遁言的情况。研究发现答辩者采用了丰富的遁言形式;遁言运用与答辩者的情态表达存在密切关系;情态表达体现一定的交际意义。

The research of last two decades in academic English discourse has paid much attention to writing and its hedging, This paper aims to demonstrate the various uses of hedging and application of modality in academic spoken discourse. Two dissertation defenses of different subjects are examined to reveal how the candidates choose different modals and hedging words in different contexts. It is found that the choices are purposeful and related with the role of the candidates in the discourse. Based on the analysis of the relation of using hedging and modal certainty, a conclusion is made that hedging is very necessary as a feature in the discourse of dissertation defense.