An Analysis Of Hedges In Conclusion Sections In Chinese And American Theses

Hedges,as meta-discourse resources,are widely used in academic writing.Authors often use them to express conservative assessment of referential information,imply their degree of recognition,indicate their confidence to the propositions and leave room to negotiate with readers.As an overall assessment of research results,conclusion section is a judgment of results and plays a significant role in academic writing.A properly hedged conclusion could appropriately express authors’ stance and help them receive recognition from other academics.However,recent studies on hedges mainly focus on abstracts,introductions,manuscripts,doctoral dissertation and research articles in science and engineering from cross-disciplinary perspective,few studies are conducted in conclusion sections of Chinese and American MA theses within applied linguistics.Based on Crompton’s taxonomy,the present study aims to classify hedges in the corpora into six categories,namely,epistemic copulas,epistemic modals,adjective and adverbs expressing probability,non-factive verb phrase structures and impersonal subject + non-factive verb + NP.Cromptom’s taxonomy avoids the influences of the nature of the corpus in Prince et al.’s classification and is immune to the overlaps in Salager-Meyer’s classification.Through the analysis of hedges in Chinese and American MA theses,the study devotes to exploring statistic and linguistic characteristics of hedges in the corpora,investigating similarities and differences on hedge use and providing possible interpretations for differences.This study adopts a quantitative and qualitative method.Two corpora are constructed and 60 MA theses finished from 2011 to 2016 in applied linguistics are collected respectively from Wanfangdata and ProQuest.Chi-Square Calculator is used to examine the results in order to make a further analysis.The results show that there exist significant differences between Chinese authors and American authors in terms of the overall frequency of hedge use.Chinese authors use fewer hedges than American authors in following categories,namely,epistemic copulas,epistemic modals,adverbs expressing probability and “I/We+non-factive verb”structures.Chinese authors tend to use more epistemic modals with low degree of certainty to avoid making strong claims,while American authors use more epistemic modals with median degree of certainty,which indicates they are more confident about their claims.Compared with American authors,Chinese authors use fewer “I/We+non-factive verb” structures,which is in line with previous studies.With the absence of authors,they try to create harmonious atmosphere and to save face.However,American authors employ more “I/We+non-factive verb” structures,which implies that they try to achieve a better self-representation,subjective explicitness and interaction with readers.Besides,similarities are found in percentage distribution of categories where epistemic modals and non-factive verb structures are the most frequently used hedging strategies by Chinese and American authors,which is consistent with previous studies.No difference is found in “Impersonal subject+non-factive verb” structure,which indicates that Chinese authors employ very similar hedging strategies as their American counterparts do in expressing objective explicitness,and that their proficiency in using this kind of structure is getting closer to American authors.This study,as a complement of recent research,will benefit publication,theses writing of Chinese authors,and exert an influence on second language writing.Students are expected to strengthen their study of hedges like epistemic copulas and adverbs expressing probability under the guidance of teachers,to grasp diversified hedging strategies during writing process.