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A Corpus-Based Study of Hedges in News Report—A Case Study of COVID-19 in China Daily



Author(s)

WANG Jia-ni

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2021.02.005

Wuhan university of Technology, Wuhan, China

Hedges refer to the speakers who deliberately make the language more vague or clear in order to achieve its target language form. The initial COVID-19 in 2020 is a global epidemic, and people who stay at home relying on Internet media channels to obtain information. People are more likely to take news media as the prior measure to contact with the information. COVID-19 news is closely related to people’s daily life. COVID-19 news requires accuracy and high expression of language, and it is easy for readers to find out that reporters use a large number of hedges in COVID-19 news articles. This paper intends to conduct a self-built micro corpus so as to explore the use of hedges in COVID-19 news. Based on this research purpose, this article focuses on solving two problems: (1). The similarities and differences in the frequency and distribution of hedges in COVID-19 news; (2). The pragmatic and public opinion functions of hedges in the news of the COVID-19 epidemic. The result of the study indicated that a great number of hedges are used in the COVID-19 news. According to Prince’s classification of Hedges from the perspective of pragmatics, the distribution and frequency of different types of hedges are various. Reports sometimes manipulate the usage of hedges, change their heddging functions to protect the image of countries, enhance reader’s confidence and guide a favorable environment to society.

hedges, COVID-19, corpus, public opinion, China Daily