All of the experts vary in defining the hedges。 If in my own words, hedges are words used to express the unclear and indistinct features of things and minds。 In some way, we can say that hedges are the embodiment of fuzziness or vagueness。

3。2 The classifications of hedges

Zadeh pided the linguistic hedges into two types according to their functions。 In the first type, they are words which can be approximated by an operator acting on the fuzzy set。 In the second type, the influence of the hedge is a bit more complicated, requiring a description of the manner (Zadeh 4-34)。 Later, he further presented another categories of hedges and classified them into four kinds。 The first one is composed of some adjectives and adverbs such as extraordinarily, frequently, almost, etc; The second one is formed from the words with suffixes such as一ish, foolish and astonish 一ly, quickly and impulsively, etc; The third type mainly involves the phrases like with the purpose of, too。。。 to, etc。 which show the speaker's hesitation about their words; The fourth type is about the sentences such as I wonder, to say, if you ask me, etc。 Which can help speakers to express more politeness and more indirectness(Zadeh 202)。 Scholars like Prince, Frader and Bosk have made a careful study of hedges and pide it into two categories。 The vague meaning of one category lies in the topic itself and the vague meaning of another exists between speakers and the topic。 The former one influences the truth or false of the topic, while the purpose of the latter one is to express the speaker's attitudes towards the topic。 Thus according to this, they classified the hedges into the categories of approximators and shields (Prince, Frader and Bosk 161)。文献综述

The experts in our nation have also made some research in this area。 Some of them have presented a variety of perspectives towards the hedges。 He Ziran classified the hedges into two categories: one applied to revise the degree of truth value or alter the related scope of an utterance, the other used by speakers to judge subjectively what is said or to access indirectly what is said according to some objective evidence (He 28)。 While Wu Tieping claimed that hedges can be pided into three types from the perspective of upper and/or lower limit of fuzzy words or phrases。 The first type refers to fuzzy words or phrases with distinct upper limit but not obvious lower limit。 The second type is of distinct upper limit and obvious lower limit。 The third one is fuzzy words or phrases with both indistinct upper limit and not obvious lower limit (Wu 73)。 So on the foundation of the preceding analysis, we can draw a conclusion that experts structured a variety of different classifications of hedges。

4。 Pragmatic Analysis of Hedges in Business Negotiation

 This chapter is devoted to discussing the theoretical framework for the study of using hedges in business negotiation。 A comprehensive description of business negotiation, cooperative principle and politeness principle are discussed in this chapter so as to provide a strong theoretical basis for the later analysis。

4。1 Hedges in business negotiation

As a crucial tool employed in business negotiation, hedges are greatly needed。 Schaff, the semantic scholar of Poland, pointed out that communicating with other people needs hedges which sound strange。 However, in ordinary conversation, if people without applying hedges, they will be restricted in the topic and it will end up destroying the communication。