A Comparative Study Of Hedges In English Discussion Sections Of Social Science Research Articles By Chinese And Native Researchers

Based on Hyland(1998)'s categories of hedges,this thesis aims at investigating the use of hedges in English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers.This research selected three disciplines in social science in the field of education,applied linguistics and psychology,and 20 English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers were randomly collected in each discipline,totaling 120 English discussion sections.The quantitative analysis and comparative analysis were adopted in this research for the collected 120 English discussion sections.Independent Sample T-test was employed to compare the means of frequencies of hedges in the 120 English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers.Distribution patterns of hedges were compared from the aspects of distributional composition and distributional evenness.The results demonstrate that there are similarities and differences in the use of hedges between English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers.With regard to the similarities of frequencies of hedges,epistemic lexical verbs are the most frequently used hedges and epistemic nouns are the least employed hedges in the English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers.With regard to the differences of frequencies of hedges,Chinese researchers have employed hedges less frequently as a whole than native English researchers.There are statistically significant differences in the overall use of hedges and in the use of modal auxiliaries,epistemic lexical verbs,epistemic adverbs and epistemic nouns.However,no statistically significant difference is found in the use of epistemic adjectives.With regard to the distribution patterns of hedges,the distributional composition in English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers is different.The differences are mainly reflected in the propositions of epistemic adjectives and epistemic adverbs.The propositions of epistemic adjectives are relatively higher than those of epistemic adverbs in English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers,while the propositions of epistemic adjectives and epistemic adverbs are just reverse in English discussion sections written by native English researchers.As for the distributional evenness,the evenness in English discussion sections written by Chinese researchers and native English researchers is almost similar.This research makes certain contributions to the enrichment and development of fuzzy linguistics.It is also of great significance to improve Chinese researchers' writing ability and quality in English discussion sections.