以英文為外語學習者口語中之規避語初探/遠東學報

Abstract

規避語之研究，向來偏重於探討第一語言中男女性使用之差異；或探討以英語為外語者在學術寫作中有關規避語之使用。少有研究討論其在外語(尤其是口語)中的使用情形。本研究之目的，經由檢視大學生之英語口語語料，探討規避語之運用。受測者為北部某大學三十三位大一學生，其中女性二十二位，男性十一位，蒐集到約 150 分鐘的口語語料，經由語料謄寫與分析，比對出以英語為母語者及以英語為外語者的使用異同。最後，本文根據研究結果，提出關於教學及未來研究之建議。

Previous researches on hedges have been primarily conducted to investigatehow hedging expressions are used in English written discourse especially in thefield of ESP. However few studies have been made to examine how hedges areused in EFL learner’s oral communication. The purpose of this study is toinvestigate how EFL college students in Taiwan use hedging expressions in thespoken discourse. The subjects are 33 freshman students at a college in northernTaiwan. A speech sample of 150-minute audio-recording of EFL students’ groupdiscussion is transcribed and analyzed. Totally 667 hedges are identified from thespoken corpus and then classified according to the taxonomy from Salager-Meyer(1994). The use of hedges between native speakers of English and EFL learners arecompared and contrasted. Conclusions and pedagogical implications are thendrawn from the findings.