An Analysis Of Hedges In Academic Theses Of Postgraduates Of English Subject Teaching

As one of the main categories of interactional meta-discourse,hedging is an important rhetorical device in English academic writing,and the use of hedges has an important influence on English academic writing.However,according to domestic literature review,few researches focus on the use of hedges in academic writing,and even fewer researches on the use of hedges in academic theses of postgraduates.Therefore,this research focuses on the use of hedges and the characteristics of hedges' distribution in academic theses of postgraduates of English subject teaching,with the aim of providing some implications for the teaching of academic writing of master thesis.This research mainly adopts the definition of Hyland's(1996),Prince et al.(1982)and He Ziran's(2010)categories of hedges as the framework of the research.By exploring hedges in academic theses of postgraduates of English subject teaching in Guangxi Normal University written by postgraduates graduating in 2015,2014 and 2013 with a total number of 79,this research analyzes the use of hedges in academic theses of postgraduates,aiming to explore:(1)What are the overall frequency and distribution of hedges in master theses of English subject teaching in Guangxi Normal University?(2)Is there any significant difference between the use of hedges in GNU corpus,IEIJ corpus and PP corpus respectively?(3)What kind of hedges do postgraduates use the most frequently and hedges that they seldom use in GNU corpus compared with the PP corpus and IEIJ corpus?(4)What are the hedges' using features in Guangxi Normal University?The findings of the research are the followings:(1)On the whole,the use frequency of hedges in the masters' theses of Guangxi Normal University is higher than that of international English important journals and proceedings papers.(2)The three corpora are nearly in the same trend,but there are significance differences in the use of adverbs of degree,modal auxiliaries and clause expressions of attribute shields between master theses in Guangxi Normal University and the other two kinds of academic papers.(3)There are some specific features of the four types and their subtypes of hedges in master theses of Guangxi Normal University,as well as the preference of hedges' choice.(4)If certain types(the top use of hedges)of hedges were all removed from the three corpora,postgraduates in Guangxi Normal University use the least amount of hedges.Finally,according to the result of the research,this research puts forward some feasible suggestions on how to improve academic writing level of postgraduate students in English subject teaching from the perspectives of students,teachers and curriculum designers.