Based on Prince\'s classification of hedges,this paper explores English hedges in courtroom answers and their conversational implicature,with an aim to illustrate that hedges play a very important role in courtroom answers: they can bring about various conversational implicatures and thus affect the results of the courtroom inquiries.

The present study concentrates on pragmatic vagueness as a strategy in Chinese courtroom response.

The present study, which adopts Critical Discourse Analysis, the Cooperative Principle and the Principle of Goal Analysis as its analytic approaches, analyzes Saddam Hussein’s courtroom responses in his trial (from October 19, 2005 to December 31, 2006).