An Analysis of Pragmatic Functions of Hedging in American Presidential Inaugural Addresses

Abstract

This paper endeavors to analyze the functions of hedging devices in American presidential inaugural addresses from the 20th century to present on the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. Hedging is an important ingredient of fuzziness and plays an important role in human communication. People often take it as an effective strategy to improve their expressiveness and communicative effects. In American presidential inaugural addresses, the application of hedging contributes a lot to the mildness, politeness and flexibility of linguistic expressions, thus fulfilling the needs of some special political purposes.