| The ability to write abstracts in English has become increasing important for the researchers who want to get the international recognitions within academic world. An abstract is a concise and summary statement of the paper without annotation. Hedge is an important strategy which is frequently used in English abstract 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, many writers have an inadequate knowledge of hedge and they find it difficult to hedge their statements appropriately. As a result, many claims made tend to be too assertive or overconfident. The problem is more serious in English abstracts written by non-native speakers. This thesis presents a contrastive study of lexical hedges 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 taxonomies and distribution of hedges in both corpora. The research shows that varieties of hedges used in CEL Corpus are fewer than those in NES Corpus. The reasons may be diverse. Language proficiency and cultural differences are the two major influencing factors. And another reason is the lack of the knowledge of the principles and rules observed by the academic community. The findings provide some implications concerning the pedagogy of English abstract writing with the purpose of improving the Chinese English writers'awareness of hedging and competence of using lexical hedges appropriately in their future writings. |
