A Contrastive Study Of Hedges In Abstracts Of Mining Engineering Papers By Chinese And Native English Authors

The abstract of an academic paper is objective and accurate for readers to keep abreast of the latest academic trends. It summarizes the main idea and can help the readers to retrieve and decide whether to read the whole paper or not within few seconds. It plays a role in delivering academic information and presenting academic achievement.As a writing strategy, hedges can not only reflect the author’s prudent attitude and modest style, but also mitigate the speaking tone to avoid speaking too absolutely.Hedges provide room for further study and indicate the author’s attitude and politeness.Based on Hyland’s definition and Varttala’s classification of hedges, this study attempts to analyze lexical hedges in two corpora which include 150 abstracts respectively with the help of Ant Conc 3.2.1 and SPSS16.0. The contrastive study shows the distribution and features of lexical hedges.The result shows that both similarities and differences in the number and distribution of hedges exist in the two corpora. Similarities:(1) Hedges occur fair frequently in two corpora and the use of some high frequency hedges are similar;(2)Both corpora tend to use modal auxiliaries, adjectives and nouns instead of full verbs and adverbs with regard to five categories of hedges. Differences:(1) There is significant difference of total number and items of hedges in the two corpora.Generally, the total number and items of hedges by natives are more than that of Chinese;(2) In the five lexical categories, the total number of modal auxiliary, full verbs and nouns all has significant difference;(3) In terms of frequently used hedges of nouns, the numbers of three subcategories of nouns all have significant differences;(4) Great differences also exist in high frequency hedges in certain lexical categories;(5) High frequency hedges in different moves in two corpora also show some differences.In conclusion, all these differences may be due to cultural background and thought patterns, expressing habits and writing skills as well as the complexity of hedges. For that, by analyzing the features of hedges in abstracts written by Chinese and native authors in mining field respectively, the author hopes to provide some reference for further study.