Epistemic Rhetorical Stance: Hedges and Boosters in L1 and L2 Students’ English Writing

Abstract

A key aspect of academic writing involves delivering writer`s argument with an appropriate degree of mitigated expression and strong assertion. However, positioning statements with balanced qualification and certainty remains a formidable challenge for second language learners. Despite its significance, we know little on the use of epistemic devices in Korean students` English writing. The purpose of this paper is to compare the expression of doubt and certainty in English writing by Korean students to those of native speakers based on the learners corpora. The results indicate that Korean learners take a stronger stance in their statements, relying on a narrower range of lexical items with simpler constructions, compared to their British counterparts. Importantly, a detailed analysis regarding the language proficiency reveals that usages of epistemic metadiscourse markers in L2 essays are strongly related to the proficiency levels. Lower ability bands exhibit a heavy reliance on limited items with strong assertions while higher proficiency bands prefer alleviated expressions rather than strong assertions by employing more hedges, representing balanced distributions across lexical items.