A Study Of Hedging In Social Scientific Discourse--And Its Implications For Second Language Learners

Being opposite to the widely held belief that scientific writing is purely objective, impersonal and informational, effective scientific writing is actually interactive and thus requests writers to persuade readers and peers to accept then-claims. One important means of achieving this is the use of hedges to present claims with caution, precision and humility. This paper thus seeks to shed light on the functions of hedging in social scientific discourse based on the analysis of the surface features of hedges.The framework of the study is a combination of two theories, Prince, Frader and Bosk's taxonomy and Hyland's model. Based on this framework and by situating hedges in their contexts, the paper provides systematic interpretations of both semantic and pragmatic functions of hedging in social scientific discourse and writers' purposes of using them.Based on the framework and analyses, the paper also attempts to examine hedges in discourse in the hope that the examination can give a clearer picture of how hedges function to achieve writers' purposes of persuasion.Finally, the paper offers some suggestions for second language learners, especially for teachers to raise students' awareness of the importance of hedging in scientific writing, and points out the unsolved questions for future study.