A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Hedges In The Abstracts Of Articles In Computer Science Between China And America

Abstracts,an essential part of the academic theses,generally reflect the research purposes,objectives,methodology and results.The academic abstract writing does not necessarily mean to use language in an absolutely impersonal and certain way when reporting the results of the research;appropriate use of hedges,which could convey the tentative and ambiguous meaning with possibility,indicates the attitudes of the authors and makes the theses more objective and acceptable.Therefore,it is of great significance to explore how hedges are used in the academic abstracts.In this paper,60 abstracts of Chinese masters' theses and 60 abstracts of American scholars' academic articles published in the international journals during the period from 2015 to 2017 are collected to compile two corpora: the Corpus of American Scholars of Computer Science(CASCS)and the Corpus of Chinese Masters of Computer Science(CCMCS).Then,based on the definition of hedges by Hyland(1998)and the classification of hedges by Varttala(2001)combined with the attribution shields proposed by Prince et al.(1982)as the theoretical foundation,the author made a contrastive analysis by means of software AntConc to identify hedges in all the texts in two corpora to explore the similarities and differences in the use of hedges in the abstract writing between Chinese masters and American scholars of computer science.The results are shown as follows.Firstly,Chinese masters frequently employ more hedges than American scholars and there is a significant difference in the use of hedges in the abstract of the academic writing.Secondly,there are some similarities in the use of hedges between Chinese masters and American scholars.In the main categories of hedges,they all employ a large number of the modal auxiliaries frequently and they both are inclined to use can,In terms of the sub-categories of hedges,both sides demonstrate their own characteristics but also share some similarities.Thirdly,differences in the use of hedges between two sides are displayed from two aspects.On the one hand,in terms of the number of hedges,American scholars employ more than Chinese masters merely in categories of full verbs and adjectives.However,no significant difference is detected in the use of adjectives between two sides,while marked difference is found in the use of the remaining main categories of hedges.On the other hand,with respect to the varieties of hedges,the result indicates that American scholars generally tend to employ more varieties than their Chinese counterparts in both the main and sub-categories of hedges,though they employ fewer numbers of hedges.It is also found that Chinese masters are more likely to confine themselves to some hedges.Fourthly,possible reasons for the differences in the general number of the use of hedges between Chinese masters and American native scholars of computer science,the use of lexical verbs and nouns in the academic abstract writing between two sides and the varieties of hedges are relevant to the teaching of the academic abstract writing in the classroom,the influence of the traditional culture and Chinese masters' growing awareness of the discourse strategies as well as the level of Chinese masters' language proficiency.Through a corpus-based contrastive study on hedges in the abstracts of articles in computer science between China and America,the results of this study are expected to inspire teachers in the academic English teaching and students in the computer science field in academic abstracts writing.Besides,it is hoped that students' academic writing ability can be enhanced and their chances to publish papers in international journals can also be increased.