| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | 第5-6页 |
| ABSTRACT | 第6-7页 |
| 摘要 | 第8-11页 |
| 1. Introduction | 第11-15页 |
| 1.1 Background of the study | 第11-12页 |
| 1.2 Purpose of the study | 第12-13页 |
| 1.3 Significance of the study | 第13页 |
| 1.4 Organization of the thesis | 第13-15页 |
| 2. Literature Review | 第15-26页 |
| 2.1 Hedging theory | 第15-20页 |
| 2.1.1 Definitions of hedges | 第15-16页 |
| 2.1.2 Classifications of hedges | 第16-20页 |
| 2.2 Genre structure of civil judgments | 第20-23页 |
| 2.2.1 Genre Structure of Chinese Civil Judgments | 第20-21页 |
| 2.2.2 Genre Structure of British Civil Judgments | 第21-23页 |
| 2.3 Previous studies on hedges | 第23-24页 |
| 2.4 Previous studies on trial judgments | 第24-25页 |
| 2.5 Summary | 第25-26页 |
| 3. Methodology | 第26-31页 |
| 3.1 The Construction of the parallel corpora | 第26-27页 |
| 3.1.1 Selection of websites | 第26页 |
| 3.1.2 Selection of civil judgments | 第26-27页 |
| 3.2 Tool for Data Analysis:Wordsmith 5.0 & Microsoft Office 2007 | 第27-28页 |
| 3.3 Research procedure | 第28-31页 |
| 4. Results and Analysis | 第31-53页 |
| 4.1 Frequency and distribution of hedges in the two corpora | 第31-32页 |
| 4.2 Similarities in the use of hedges | 第32-33页 |
| 4.3 Differences in the use of hedges | 第33-49页 |
| 4.3.1 Differences in epistemic modal verbs | 第34-37页 |
| 4.3.2 Differences in epistemic lexical verbs | 第37-40页 |
| 4.3.3 Differences in epistemic lexical adjectives,adverbs and nouns | 第40-42页 |
| 4.3.4 Differences in non-lexical hedges | 第42-49页 |
| 4.4 Reasons for the differences in the use of hedges | 第49-51页 |
| 4.4.1 Linguistic variations in the two languages | 第49-50页 |
| 4.4.2 Socio-cultural factors in the use of hedges | 第50-51页 |
| 4.5 Inspirations for the writing of Chinese civil judgments | 第51-53页 |
| 5. Conclusions | 第53-56页 |
| 5.1 Major Findings | 第53-55页 |
| 5.2 Limitations of the Study | 第55页 |
| 5.3 Suggestions for Further Studies | 第55-56页 |
| References | 第56-60页 |
| Appendix | 第60-87页 |
| Appendix 1 Sample of Chinese civil judgment | 第60-65页 |
| Appendix 2 Sample of British civil judgment | 第65-87页 |
