Hedging In Chinese And English Linguistics Book Reviews

The study of hedges in academic book reviews at home and abroad is relatively rare,compared with studies on hedging in research articles(Salager-Meyer,1994;Hyland,1996;Varttala,2001,etc.),in different sections of research articles(Yang,2013;Hu & Cao,2011;Afasha & Bagherieh,2014,etc.)and in other genres such as interviews and daily conversation(Lehtinen,2013;Lavric,2010,etc.).According to Ju(2014),there are only 61 theses on academic book reviews in the past 20 years in China.Among them,24 are the comparative studies of Chinese and English academic book reviews and only 3 are the studies of hedging in academic book reviews.This paper investigates hedging in Chinese and English linguistics book reviews based on Varttala’s(2001)definition and taxonomy of hedges.Altogether 30 book reviews are selected from six leading journals,three in English(Journal of English for Academic Purposes,English for Specific Purposes and Journal of Pragmatics)and three in Chinese(Foreign Language Teaching and Research,Modern Foreign Languages and Foreign Languages Research).Five papers in each journal are selected according to the following five criteria: Nwogu’s(1997)three criteria(representativity,reputation and accessibility),year of publication(2015-2016)and length of the book reviews(4175.73 for Chinese linguistics book reviews and 1716.53 for English linguistics book reviews).This study aims to explore the similarities and differences between the two corpora and attempts to find out the underlying reasons for the similarities and differences.The study suggests that English linguistics book reviews(ELBRs)are more hedged(38.45 times per 1000 words)than Chinese linguistics book reviews(CLBRs)(23.20 times per 1000 words),in agreement with Hu & Cao’s(2011)and Yang’s(2013)results.And the conclusion section has the most frequently used hedges in both corpora,57.51 times per1000 words in ELBRs and 26.91 times per 1000 words in CLBRs,in agreement with Jia’s(2007)and Yang’s(2013)researches.But for the specific types of hedges,they have different distributions and frequencies in the two corpora.For example,modal auxiliaries are the second frequently used hedges in ELBRs(8.00 times per 1000 words)whereas they rank the fourth in CLBRs(3.16 times per 1000 words).What’s more,the study explains the similarities and differences between the two corpora from the following four aspects: nature of book reviews,cultural influences,linguistic variations in the two languages and hedging awareness.