【Abstract】This thesis aims to make a contrastive analysis of the usage of hedges between Chinese and English company profiles. The study concludes that that the communicative context constrains the writers’ choice-making of hedging， namely， the social world and mental world of the writers.
　　【Key words】hedges； company profiles； contrastive analysis； Adaption Theory
　　1. Introduction
　　1.1 Research Background
　　Recently， the study of hedges in different genres has been focused on by more and more researchers and scholars. Hedges are frequently used in company profiles. However， the quantity of the study of hedges in company profiles is small because it has not been fully developed. So far， we have little knowledge about the usage of hedges in company profiles and the differences they have. Therefore， it is of great significance to study and compare the hedges in CCP and ECP.
　　1.2 Research Purpose
　　The research aims to investigate the respective frequency and distribution of hedges and to list the linguistic realization of hedges in， and to summarize and explain the similarities and differences of Chinese and English hedges.
　　2. Literature Review
　　2.1 Hedges
　　2.1.1 Definitions
　　George Lakoff’s （1972） gives a definition of hedges，
　　“For me， some of the most interesting questions are raised by the study of words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness—words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. I will refer to such words as ‘hedges’” （Lakoff， 1972： 195）. Based on Lakoff’s concept， Brown and Levinson （1987） define hedges， “a particle， word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set”.
　　2.1.2 Classification of Hedges
　　Prince et al. （1982） from pragmatic categorization observes that hedges usually make things fuzzy through two different means and then he categorized hedges into two groups： approximators and shields. The following figure 1 illustrates the taxonomy of hedges of Price et al. （1982：93）
　　Figure 1 Taxonomy of hedges of Prince et al. （Price et al.1982：93）.
　　2.2 Theoretical Framework： Adaption Theory
　　Jef Verschueren firstly proposes adaption theory in Pragmatics is a Theory of Linguistic Adaption in 1987.
　　To characterize language adaption as one of essential language characteristics， Verschueren （2000） points out four inter-related and combined angles： contextual correlates of adaptability， structural objects of adaptability， dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaption process. Specifically， the elements of the communicative context are composed of the physical world， social word， the mental world and the utterer and interpreter.