A Comparative Study On The Hedges In Discussion Sections Of English-Mediated Empirical Academic Discourses By Chinese And Native Scholars

As an effective communicative strategy,hedges play a crucial role in academic writing.Hedges refer to structures that convey uncertainty of propositions through any linguistic means such as lexicon,phrases and sentences.The use of hedges can not only modify the truth or scope of the proposition in academic writing,but also indicate the subjective speculation or indirect evaluation based on factual evidence of writers(Huang,2002).Hence,hedges can soften the tone of the proposition and express certain uncertainty and tentativeness to reduce the author’s commitment to the truth of his statement.Meanwhile,the employment of hedges leaves room for discussion between readers and writers and reflects their strict scientific attitude and respect for their peers so as to be accepted by the academic community.In view of abundant semantic features and flexible pragmatic functions of hedges,more and more scholars tend to put more efforts on hedges in academic writing and conduct several research.Many scholars have studied hedges in the disciplines like Biology and Medicine,but few studies on hedges are carried out in the field of applied linguistics.At the same time,there is a lack of research on hedges in discussion sections in that other parts of academic discourse including abstracts,introductions and conclusions are paid more attention by scholars.Therefore,the following three questions will be discussed based on Hyland’s(1988)classification of hedges in this study:(1)What are the overall types and frequency of lexical hedges in discussion sections of RAs written by Chinese experts and English native experts?(2)What is the distribution of each category of hedges in discussion sections of RAs written by Chinese experts and English native experts?(3)What are differences and similarities in the frequency and types of hedges in discussion sections of RAs between two groups of writers?A comparative study on hedges in two self-compiled corpora which consist of discussion sections of RAs written by Chinese scholars and native English scholars respectively is conducted in this study.Each corpus comprises 50 academic texts from international linguistic journals,with a total amount of 130640 tokens.158 different lexical items as hedges are selected and identified by the software Ant Conc 3.2.1 as well as manual selection.This study compares and analyzes the frequency and types of hedges in the two corpora.The chi-square test is also made through SPSS to find out whether there is significant difference in the use of hedges between two groups of writers.The results are as follows:(1)Five categories of hedges are all found in two corpora.According to the frequency,modal verbs are the most frequent hedging devices followed by lexical verbs,adjectives,adverbs and nouns in CEC.And in NEC,modal verbs also appear most frequently followed by lexical verbs,adverbs,adjectives and nouns.(2)With respect to specific distribution of each category of hedges,some results are also presented.In the category of modal verbs,may,might and would are proved to be the most frequent hedges in two corpora.Suggest,indicate,tend and seem are more common in the category of lexical verbs in two corpora.Top three adjectives with high frequency are same in two corpora including significant,possible and likely.As regard to the category of adverbs,generally,often,relatively and perhaps are used most frequently by two groups of writers.Finally,possibility,implication,hypothesis and claim are of highest frequency of hedging nouns in two corpora.(3)In terms of the frequency of hedges,both Chinese and native scholars use hedges frequently in discussion sections of RAs in the field of applied linguistics.Although native scholars use more hedges than Chinese scholars,there is no significant difference between them.From the perspective of the frequency of each category of hedges,there is only significant difference in the frequency of nouns and adverbs between two groups of writers.In terms of the types of hedges,modal verbs and lexical verbs are the most common hedges used by two groups of writers while nouns are the least.Although two groups of writers show a similar preference on some specific lexical items as hedges,there still remains some difference between them.These results indicate that Chinese scholars,who actively conform to the international academic discourse norms,have mastered the use of hedges just like native scholars to a certain extent and their awareness of using hedges has been enhanced.It is expected that this study can promote the second language learners’ understanding of hedges and improve their academic writing ability.