Abstract
Academic writers resort to hedging as one of the interpersonal metadiscourse categories needed to present their findings cautiously in the hope that their research contribution can be accepted by the academic community. Such acceptance, to a great extent, depends on how propositions and claims are presented to the academic community. The purpose of the present study was to compare and contrast the hedges used in the Discussion sections of educational research articles in English with those in Malay. To provide additional insights, information was elicited from both English and Malay specialist informants on their perceptions of hedging in research article writing. This study contributes to an understanding on the use of hedges throughout the Discussion sections of the research articles from the two languages and possible contextual and socio-cultural factors which may have influenced their use. The corpus of the present study is made up of the Discussion sections of English and Malay research articles published between 2012 and 2017. The analytical framework of this study is based on Hyland’s (1996) four hedging functions, which are writer-oriented, attribute-oriented, reliability-oriented, and reader-oriented. Our analysis shows that overall, hedges are found in more English than Malay discussions. The greater number of hedges in the English data is in principle expected as English is a remarkably hedging culture. A closer examination reveals that English writers tend to subtly bring the value of the writer’s contribution to the fore, tone down the force of the arguments, and bring forth the tentative nature of the conclusion drawn on the issue examined. The findings provide pedagogical implications in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom.
Highlights
The term ‘hedges’ was first introduced by Lakoff (1972, p. 175) as “words whose job is to make things fuzzy”
The coding results of this study showed that the four types of hedging orientations were contributed by: Category 1: Writer-oriented hedges Category 1 Item 1 Category 1 Item 2 Category 1 Item 3 Category 1 Item 4 Category 1 Item 5 Category 1 Item 6
The findings show that as far as non-factive knowledge is concerned, more knowledge claims are presented in mitigated form in English than Malay research article discussions
Summary
The term ‘hedges’ was first introduced by Lakoff (1972, p. 175) as “words whose job is to make things fuzzy”. Hyland held that being able to employ hedges appropriately is crucial to successful academic writing. This ability is a complex task even for those second language (L2) speakers with relatively high proficiencies in lexis and grammar of English Duszak (1994) suggests that the use of discoursal resources which are valued in the non-native speakers’ communication may lead them to write English academic prose that is unclear to an English audience. As more non-native English speakers are communicating in written academic English, more tend to use discoursal patterns typical of their own tongue but alien to English, explaining why their English articles often attract less interest and receive less appreciation The problem faced by second language learners (L2) is that they are learning a foreign or second language, and acquiring cross-cultural competence in the use of hedges
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