A Comparative Study On The Hedges In English Scientific Research Articles Written By Published And Student Writers

The study on hedges has been one of foci in the literature of linguistics and applied linguistics since Lakoff(1972)proposed the notion of hedges.Most studies on hedges focus on the discourse of the daily communication while little research is made on hedges in academic writings,especially little concern about the use of hedges in students' academic writings.Based on the research made by Hyland on hedges,this study examines the use of hedges in published and students' writings by analyzing 20 students' unpublished scientific research articles selected from the proceedings of Tri-University International Joint Seminar and Symposium1(involving four disciplines: Food Science and Biotechnology,Material Science and Engineering,Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,and Environmental Engineering)and 20 published scientific research articles in corresponding disciplines selected from Science Direct.UAM Corpus Tool 3.0 is used to facilitate the labeling of hedges and SPSS 19.0 is used to process statistic data.Findings are specified as follows:Hedges applied by student writers(8.7)per 1000 words are almost a half of those applied by published writers(15.7).Hedges in students' writings are sequenced as reliability-oriented hedges(4.1),writer-oriented hedges(3.1),reader-oriented hedges(0.8)and attribute-oriented hedges(0.7)in terms of frequency while in published writings,they are reliability-oriented hedges(6.7),writer-oriented hedges(5.1),attribute-oriented hedges(2.0)and reader-oriented hedges(1.9).Statistics indicate that significant differences exist for each type of hedges in both corpora.Hedges are unevenly distributed through compositional sections: conclusion(28.3),introduction(13.2),results & discussion(9.4)and methodology(1.9)for student writers while conclusion(29.5),results & discussion(19.4),introduction(14.1)and methodology(5.0)for published writers.Statistics suggest that significant differences exist for method ology and results & discussion.In the section of introduction,hedges in the order of frequency in students' writings are reliability-oriented hedges(6.6),writer-oriented hedges(3.8),attribute-oriented hedges(1.8)and reader-oriented hedges(1.4)while they are writer-oriented hedges(5.8),reliability-oriented hedges(4.2),attribute-oriented hedges(2.3)and reader-oriented hedges(1.9)in published corpus.Statistics demonstrate that there is a significant difference for writer-oriented hedges.There are no significant differences for the other three types of hedges.In the section of methodology,hedges in both corpora are ranked as reliability-oriented hedges(1.0/2.5),writer-oriented hedges(0.6/1.3),attribute-oriented hedges(0.3/0.7)and reader-oriented hedges(0/0.4)in terms of frequency.Statistics indicate that there is no significant difference for attribute-oriented hedges.There are significant differences for the other three types of hedges.In the section of results & discussion,hedges in the order of frequency in students' writings are reliability-oriented hedges(4.8),writer-oriented hedges(3.2),reader-oriented hedges(0.8)and attribute-oriented hedges(0.7)while they are reliability-oriented hedges(9.1),writer-oriented hedges(6.4),attribute-oriented hedges(2.5)and reader-oriented hedges(2.2)in published corpus.Statistics demonstrate that significant differences exist for each type of hedges.In the section of conclusion,hedges in students' writings are sequenced as writer-oriented hedges(17.1),reliability-oriented hedges(7.9),reader-oriented hedges(3.3)and attribute-oriented hedges(0)in terms of frequency while in published writings,they are writer-oriented hedges(10.8),reader-oriented hedges(10.2),reliability-oriented hedges(6.7)and attribute-oriented hedges(1.9).Statistics suggest that there is no significant difference for reliability-oriented hedges.There are significant differences for the other three types of hedges.As for devices of realizing hedges,published writers apply hedging devices more comprehensively,diversely and flexibly than student writers.In terms of attribute-oriented hedges,published writers mainly apply content disjuncts and styledisjuncts while student writers mainly focus on style disjuncts.In terms of reliability-oriented hedges,published writers prefer to apply epistemic lexical verbs,epistemic adjectives,epistemic nouns and modal verbs whereas student writers tend to apply epistemic lexical verbs and modal verbs.In terms of writer-oriented hedges,published corpus contains epistemic lexical verbs,impersonal expressions,modal verbs and impersonal reference while students corpus only contains epistemic lexical verbs and modal verbs.In terms of reader-oriented hedges,published writers usually apply assuming shared goals,hypotheticals and involving readers while student writers often apply personal attribution and personal reference.The findings show that hedges are associated with the rhetorical purpose of each section.However,student writers seem to fail to realize such association.In addition,student writers tend to use fewer hedges with little variation in devices of realizing hedges than published writers.It is implied that teachers of English for academic purpose should develop student writers' conscious awareness of applying hedges and instruct them how hedges contribute to the achievement of rhetorical purpose of each section in a systematic way and how to use a variety of hedges flexibly in their writings.And thus their academic competence in communication is improved.