HEDGING IN RESEARCH MEDICAL ARTICLES: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC BULGARIAN-ENGLISH STUDY

Abstract

In linguistics, the word “hedge” has the meaning of "mitigating", “reducing the power of expression”. It was Brown and Levinson [1], who, based on Goffman's work [2], [3], introduced the concepts of “Positive Face” and “Negative Face”. The latter is the need for an individual not to be interrupted, while the former is the desire to be liked and approved by others (Goffman, 1967). Hedging, from a theoretical point of view, is a form of the author's Ethos and identity, their degree of presence in the text. It also suggests that there may be factors in language interaction that make it possible for the sender's message to be perceived as a "threat" - for example, when using the English personal pronoun "YOU" in summarizing, the recipient can subconsciously associate themselves with the referrer of the personal pronoun. Given that scientific hypotheses are proven or refuted in RMA, it is quite natural for the authors to resort to different strategies of distancing or expressing solidarity (Meyers 1989).Objectification strategies of expression also determine the authorial place in the scientific discourse in the socializing community. The author's ethos can be explored by analyzing the different epistemic markers associated with their drive for persuasion and confidence. The study presents a quantitative and qualitative analyses of research medical articles with regard to their strategies for objectification. It is based on a corpus of 207 articles in Bulgarian and 129 in English, all excerpted from prestigious high impact factor journals. The analysis of the different hedging markers has been implemented by using Wordsmith Tools word analyzing programme, version 6.0. (Scott 2012). By examining the different markers for the presence or absence of the author in the text, we can grasp the architectonics of the RMA - not only the certainty encoded in rhetorical conviction, but also the most important feature - the “topos” of authorial perception in the scientific discourse. From the data obtained with regard to hedging, it can be concluded that in both languages, hedge structures are strongly determined by the standards imposed by the discourse community and are similar in volume and content, while the linguistic means inherent in the respective language mediate and define differences in surface structures - especially in view of the greater expression of modal verbs in the articles from the English corps and the "offset" in the BC articles respectively - mainly by means of depersonalization strategies. The very rhetorical structure of the articles of both corpora implies insignificant differences as regards the structure and distribution of hedge forms. In general, the rhetorical function of these forms has an equivalent linguistic force in the excerpted texts of the two large corpora.