【文章內(nèi)容簡介】 ignore the vague ones while reading disaster news. The present research aims at revealing the different circumstances in which precise and vague NEs are used and exploring the reasons why they are used. Thus, readers can better their understanding of the use of various NEs and pay more attention to related contexts so as to judge and appreciate the use of such expressions. Secondly, this study may provide advice on journalistic writing. The appropriate use of vague NEs is indeed one of the criteria for judging whether a piece of writing is good or not. The following is what Channell (2000, p. 3) said about what a good writer should do.It is important to appreciate that one of the ways they (petent writers) demonstrate their petence is through their use of a degree of vagueness which is right for the purpose of writing. This is key to understand that vagueness in language is neither all ‘bad’ nor all ‘good’. What matters is that vague language is used appropriately. According to the quotation, the appropriate use of vagueness is a reflection of writers’ petence. A petent writer should be able to adopt vague language properly.The present study facilitates disaster reporting since it addresses how to use precise NEs or vague ones to depict disaster events of natural or humanrelated reasons. Hopefully the research will furnish reporters with some knowledge about the use of NEs so that they can consciously adopt this sort of expressions freely and effectively. Once they have a firm understanding of the mechanism of the use of NEs, they can achieve stronger municative effects.Last but not least, the present research intends to find out how reporters convey their involvement in disaster reports. Once readers know reporters’ involvement and expectations, they will deepen their understanding of the disaster news besides the sheer facts. Also, reporters can apply the proper ways of expressing their involvement to disaster reports so as to enable their readers to appreciate their emotions and attitudinal inclinations. Overview of the ThesisThe thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One serves as an introduction to the whole study. This chapter introduces the objectives, the need and the significance of the study. Chapter Two provides a literature review of related studies including the exploration of some key terms, the studies on NEs, subjectivity and involvement in news reporting and the theoretical framework of the present thesis. Chapter Three offers the methodology of the present study, expounding research questions, the process of data collection and data analysis. Chapter Four is about the results and discussion. This chapter reveals and analyzes the distribution of NEs, the influence of the nature of disasters on the use of NEs and the expressions of involvement together with NEs. What follows is a parative study on disaster news in Chinese and English. The final chapter summarizes the whole study and states the major findings, the implications and limitations of the study. Then, this chapter suggests some directions for future studies. CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEWThis chapter reviews previous research on various aspects, namely hedges, numbers in news reporting and reporters’ involvement in news reporting. It starts with number expressions (NEs) which may be precise or vague. The vague ones are usually achieved by adding hedges to numbers. By means of adopting precise and vague numbers, reporters can convey their involvement in the disaster events they report. As for the explanation of the mechanism in adopting NEs, the author will turn to the Adaptation Theory. This chapter ends with a brief summary. Number Expressions in Communication Before explaining NEs, the author starts with the concept of number. Numbers consist of two categories, namely, cardinal numbers (cardinals) and ordinal numbers (ordinals). Cardinals are used when people count people or things, for example, 6 boys, 200 dollars while ordinals are used when people put things in a numerical order, for instance, first, second, etc. (Richards, Platt amp。 Platt, 2002, p. 316).By NEs, the author means the expressions indicating the concept of quantity. In other words, they are used to express “how much” or “how many” of things or of people. They cover a much wider range of expressions related to quantity than numbers. They roughly fall into two categories, hedged NEs and nonhedged ones. The former category refers to NEs that are vague in meaning and that show the uncertainty of the quantity. It is mainly made up of hedged NEs (the binations of cardinals and hedges), ., about 20, and nonhedged ones, ., 部分 (a portion) and 220 miles, which was exemplified and explained in the previous chapter of the present thesis. The latter one which refers to an exact quantity in munication is identical to cardinal numbers.Various types of writings, such as technological discourse, political discourse, legal discourse, literature, academic writing, and news reporting, are abundant in NEs. Much research work on hedges in these writings has been done and more research is to be done. The following section will cover some studies on hedges. Hedges: Definitions, Classifications, and FunctionsHedges have aroused the interest of many researchers. In the 1970’s, hedges were “exclusively viewed from the semantic point of view”. Schr246。der amp。 Zimmer. Hedging research in pragmatics: A bibliographical research guide to hedging. (.). Retrieved Oct. 18, 2007, from Since 1980, hedges have been introduced into the pragmatic field and have proved to be “a productive research area” (Schr246。der amp。 Zimmer ibid.). Chinese scholars also show interest in hedges. Pang (2007, p. 32) noticed the rise in the number of studies on hedges in China and the number of publications amounted to as many as 100. Definition of hedges The definition of hedges can be traced back to Zadeh (1965, pp. 338