Acontrastive Study Ofapplication Of Hedging Inabstracts Of Scientific Papers

With the development of economy and the international exchange of academic research information, researchers today can get the latest information of researches both at home and abroad in different fields very conveniently. Abstract, the summary of scientific paper, provides sufficient information concerning research purpose(s), methodology and conclusions in a relatively short space. Chinese researchers should publish their research results in academic journal with English abstracts. Usually, Chinese researchers will write their Chinese abstracts first and then render them into English rather than writing the English abstracts in English directly. Then when they render their abstracts into English, they may make mistakes (including mistakes in hedging), because there may exist some similarities and differences in the use of hedging in both abstracts.Hedging, an important device to protect people from going to extremes is widely used in academic papers. Then are the applications of hedging in Chinese and English abstracts of scientific papers similar or different? What are their similarities and differences? And what can Chinese scholars learn from the study of these similarities and differences in the application of hedging when they write English abstracts?In order to find out the similarities and differences between Chinese and English in hedging in abstract writing, this research chooses 30 abstracts randomly from Excellent Master's Thesis Data Bank from www. CNKI .net in China (which are believed to be authoritative and representative) and take them as subjects for study. These 30 abstracts are concerned with natural sceinces in computer, environment, and material with both Chinese and English version. This research mainly compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between Chinese and English abstracts of scientific papers both from the distribution in different moves and from different lexical means to demonstrate hedging. And the reasons for the similarities and differences of hedging between Chinese and English abstracts are also discussed.Research results in the present research show that:i) there exist more similarities than differences in both Chinese and English abstracts of scientific papers. But this does imply that researchers can directly render their Chinese abstracts into English without paying attention to their differences;ii) in both Chinese and English abstracts of scientific papers, the most frequently employed hedges is epistemic adjective, which is distributed at all four moves in an abstract. In Chinese abstracts, the number of hedges in the result move is greater than its corresponding part in English abstracts. However, the number of hedges in the introduction move in English abstracts is greater than its corresponding part in Chinese abstracts.Writing English abstracts correctly can foster the communication of theoretical and technological researches. Neglecting the differences between Chinese and English in hedging may cause some trouble or misunderstanding. Therefore, the present research into hedging may shed some light on effective communication of scientific and technological information especially in abstract writing.