Title:
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF HEDGES BETWEEN CHINESE AND AMERICAN COMPANY PROFILES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ADAPTATION THEORY

Authors:
Jun Du

Abstract:
This study makes a contrastive analysis of hedges between Chinese and American company profiles by building two corpora consisting of 30 Chinese company profiles (CCP) and 30 American company profiles (ACP) respectively and using the analytical tool AntConc4.0.5 and Chi-square test. The major findings are as follows. Overall, hedges occur in both Chinese and American company profiles, but are used more frequently in ACP than CCP. Specifically, in both CCP and ACP, approximators are adopted significantly more often than shields; rounders are the most frequent type of hedges; compared with CCP, rounders and plausibility shields appear more frequently in ACP. The reasons for the similarities and differences are described from the perspective of Adaptation Theory. These findings enrich the present studies of hedges in company profiles and provide good guidance for Chinese companies to write profiles in a more objective and credible way.

Keywords:
Company profiles, Hedges, Adaptation Theory, Contrastive analysis

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.37500/IJESSR.2022.5525