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 f...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.展开更多
文摘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.
