A Contrastive Study Of Hedging In English Academic Articles--Different Uses For Native English Speakers And Chinese English Learners

The ability to write academic articles in English has become essential for the coming generation of scholars and researchers who wants to succeed within academic world, since English has become the international language of research. Hedging is an important strategy which is frequently used in English academic writing, for it can mark the writers' attitudes to both propositions and audience, leave room for discussion and show the writers' scientific honesty and deference to their peers. However, hedging has been ignored or associated with poor style for a long time. Many writers have an inadequate knowledge of hedging and they find it difficult to hedge their statements appropriately. As a result, many claims made tend to be too assertive and overconfident. The problem is more serious in English articles written by non-native speakers (NNSs). This paper presents a contrastive study of hedging in two self-compiled academic corpora, namely, native English speakers (NESs) Corpus and Chinese English learners (CEL) Corpus, by providing both qualitative and quantitative information concerning the incidences, the categories and distribution of hedging in both corpora, and by discussing the functions of various kinds of hedging and the reasons presumed to encourage and discourage hedging. The research shows that hedges used in CEL Corpus are fewer than those in NES Corpus both in number and in variety. The reasons may be diverse. Language proficiency and cultural differences are the two major influencing factors. And another reason is the authors' ignorance of the principles and rules observed by the academic community. The paper also provides some suggestions and implications as concerns the pedagogy of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) with the purpose of improving the L2 writers' awareness of hedging and competence of using hedging appropriately in their academic writings.