CHAPTER ONE  INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Topic

This thesis is going to conduct a pragmatic study on the hedges applied in the item of “risk factors” in the English annual reports of American listed photovoltaic companies, which usually stands as “Item 1A” in the report. This item makes a detailed statement on the risks and uncertainties which probably occur in the investment of a company’s stock, and which investors should seriously consider before purchasing shares of the company. Some  annual reports include possible measures to  cope with the risks and uncertainties in this item at the same time. 

More specifically, this thesis aims at studying the pragmatic functions of hedges used  in  the  “risk  factors”  item  in  the annual  reports  of  the  American  listed photovoltaic companies. 

Enlightened  by  Hyland’s  model  of  hedges,  the  author  classified  the  hedges adopted  in  the  data  into  four major categories—attribute  accuracy-oriented  hedges, reliability  accuracy-oriented  hedges,  writer-oriented  hedges,  and reader-oriented hedges,  so  as  to  investigate  the  report  writer’s  preference  for  different  categories  of hedges  in the  “risk  factors”  item.  Furthermore,  the  author  conducted  a  pragmatic analysis on the specific functions which the hedges served in the “risk factors” items in  annual  reports  based  on  the  cooperative  principle  proposed  by  Grice. Finally, pragmatic functions served by the hedges were sought out based on the above studies.

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1.2 Rationale and Significance

The  rationale  for  conducting  the  research  of  hedges  in  the  particular  context—“risk factors” item of corporate annual reports arises from the following reasons:

One of the reasons for choosing annual reports of listed companies as analytical materials  for  the  present  study  lies in the  author’s  keen  interest  in  how  hedges  are applied  in  such  kind  of  formal  context  which  requires  authenticity and  precision  of information,  while  hedges  are  “the  use  of  words  and  expressions  which  encode  the writer’s degree of commitment to the truth of what they said” (Channell, 1994).

Secondly, the majority of articles and studies availablemainly deal with hedges in academic articles, news discourse, scientific discourse and the like, while studies of hedges  in  business  discourse,  particularly  in  annual  reports  of iste enterprises,  are still of a relatively small number. Therefore, the author holds that an investigation of hedges  in  the  “risk  factors”  item  in  annual  reports  is  meaningful,  for  it  can  provide implications  for  the  research  into  the  specific  pragmatic  functions  of  hedges  in business discourse, particularly in annual reports.  

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CHAPTER TWO  LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definitions of Hedges

Before reviewing the definitions of hedges, the first to be mentioned is Zadeh and his Fuzzy  Sets  Theory.  In  1965, Lotfi A.  Zadeh  published  his  articled  Fuzzy  Sets  in  the magazine  of  Information  and  Control,  which  marked  the beginning  of  fuzzy  theory. “More often than not, the classes of objects encountered in the real physical world do not have precisely defined criteria of membership” (Zadeh, 1965:338). The fuzzy set theory  has  exerted  a  profound influence  on  mathematics,  logistics,  and  psychology, and has become the theoretical foundation for vagueness linguistics.

Based on Zadeh’s Fuzzy Set Theory, the American linguist Lakoff was the first to introduce the notion of hedges in the early 1960s. He defined hedges as “words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (Lakoff, 1972:458) in the article A Study of Meaning  Criteria  and  the  Logic  of  Fuzzy  Concepts.  Lakoff  mainly  cared  about  the semantic property of hedges. Enlightened by Lakoff’s definition, many linguists have tried to define the term “hedge” in their own ways.

Prince  et  al.  adapted  Lakoff’s  definition.  From  their  perspective,  a  hedge  is  a word  or  phrase  whose  job  is  to make  things  fuzzier  (Prince,  Frader  &  Bosk, 1982:83-97).  Under  this  definition,  they  categorized  hedges  into two types—approximators  and  shields.  This  will  be  further  explained  in  the  theoretical framework. 

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2.2 Classifications of Hedges

The  classification  of  hedges is  also  rich  in  variety.  Many  scholars  from  home  and abroad have tried to classify hedges from different perspectives. 

According  to  Zadeh  (1965),  hedges  are  divided  into  four  categories  from  the grammatical perspective:

(1) Some  adjectives  and  adverbs,  like  very,  always,  often,  recently,  almost, somewhere, etc.

(2) Some  words  ending  with  suffixes,  like  –ish,  -ly,  etc.  For  instance,  childish, greenish, etc. 

(3) Some phrases to indicate speakers’ uncertainty or hesitation, such as adverbial phrases like as if, as though, etc.

(4) Some  clauses  to  help  speakers  to  demonstrate  opinions  or  ideas  in  a  more polite and moderate way, such as I think, I believe, I suggest, etc.

Based  on  Grice’s  cooperative  principles,  Brown  and  Levinson  (1987)  divided hedges  into  four  categories: quantity hedges,  quality  hedges,  relevance  hedges,  and manner hedges. Quantity hedges are a helpful means to modify requests or complaints (such as roughly, more or less, approximately, etc.). Quality hedges are used to either weaken or strengthen the speaker’s commitment to his/her statement (such as I think, I believe, etc.). Relevance hedges can be used to redress suggestions or offers (such as “While  I  remember…”,  “This  may  not  be  relevant  but…”  etc.). Manner  hedges  are widely employed to redress different kinds of Face Threatening Acts (such as “If you see what I mean…” etc.).

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CHAPTER THREE   THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK..................15

3.1 Hyland’s Model.....................15

3.2 The Cooperative Principle ...............17

CHAPTER FOUR   RESEARCH PROCUDURE ....................21

4.1 Research Procedures ...................21

4.2 Validity and Reliability ..................26

CHAPTER FIVE   ANALYSIS OF HEDGES IN CORPUS RFE..............27

5.1 Distribution and Linguistic Realization of Hedges in RFE ...............27

5.1.1 Accuracy-oriented Hedges in RFE..................28

CHAPTER FIVE  ANALYSIS OF HEDGES IN CORPUS RFE

5.1 Distribution and Linguistic Realization of Hedges in RFE

This section reveals the distribution and linguistic realization of the hedging devices according to the pragmatic categorization proposed by Hyland.  In the aggregate, the frequency of all the hedging devices occurring in the corpus RFE is 13757, altogether containing  214  different  hedging  devices.  Exhaustive  results  according  to  Hyland’s model are illustrated in Table 5.1:

In  the  following  sections,  each  category  of  hedging  devices  will  be  further divided  into  more  detailed  sub-categories,  and  examples  will  be  extracted  from  the corpus  RFE  and  used  for  analysis  and  explanation  of  the use  of  hedging  devices  in each sub-category.

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CHAPTER SIX  CONCLUSION

6.1 Major Findings

This  research  is  a  study  of  the  hedges  used  in  the  “risk  factors”  item  in  corporate annual  reports  under Hyland’s  model.  After  identification  of  the  hedges  and calculation  of  the  frequency  of  each  category  of hedges, it  is  found  that accuracy-oriented  hedges  are  the  most  frequently  used  hedges  in  the  corpus, accounting nearly three quarters of all the hedges, while the writer-oriented type is the least frequently used one. 

Based  on  Grice’s  cooperative  principle,  this  thesis  studies  hedges  in  the  “risk factors”  item  and  analyzes  what is  implied  by  report  writers.  Moreover,  the  author specifies this linguistic phenomenon by utilizing  the four maxims in the cooperative principle  with  an  aim  to  conduct  a  more  convincing  research.  The  four  maxims provide  a framework  for  data  analysis.  After  the  analysis  under  the  theoretical framework of cooperative principle, several conclusions are drawn as follows. Firstly, annual  report  writers  adopt  hedges  for  the  sake  of  making  a  more accurate  and convincing statement. Secondly, from the perspective of cooperative principle, report writers  employ hedges  to  observe  or  violate  the  sub-principle  of  cooperative principles in order to achieve special purposes. For example, they observe the quality maxim  by  employing  hedges  like  “probably”  and  “l(fā)ikely”  because  they  help avoid making  an  absolute  and  arbitrary  statement.  Furthermore,  they  also  violate  the quantity  maxim  by utilizing some  hedges  like  “l(fā)ess  than”,  “more  than”  and “adequate”, and observe the maxim of manner by using hedges like “at all times”. The reason  for  them  to  do  so  is  to  convey  the  intended  information  more  effectively, to minimize the  responsibility  the  corporation  needs  to  bear,  and  to  create  a  rigorous corporate image. 

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