Softening the Propositional Claims: Investigation of Appropriate Use of Hedging Strategies in Academic Writing

Abstract

The current study examines the appropriate usage of hedging strategies in the discussion sections of doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics produced by American and Pakistani writers. To do this, a corpus of 50 discussion sections from doctoral dissertations completed between 2018 and 2020 has been compiled. The primary objective of the current study is to examine the hedging strategies utilized in the discussion part to soften the propositional assertions. Martin’s (2008) taxonomy of hedging strategies was utilized to categorize the various types of hedges found in the texts. A computer concordancing tool (AntConc 3.4) was used in order to analyze two corpora for quantification, which was further supplemented with manual analysis. The findings indicated that American writers utilized more hedging devices in their discussion sections, whereas Pakistani writers used fewer hedging tactics. The findings of this study have implications for academic writing and EFL writing instruction.