To hedge or not to hedge: the use of epistemic modal expressions in popular science in English texts, English–German translations, and German original texts

Abstract

Hedging plays a significant role in both scientific writing proper and its popularized form. However, most research has concentrated on the former text type, while comparatively little attention has been paid to the phenomenon in popular science. The present study uses a corpus of English popular scientific articles, their German translations, and original German popular scientific articles to investigate the use of epistemic modal markers (such as might, could, perhaps), which represent a common form of hedging, as they serve to mark the speaker's uncertainty about the truth of a proposition. The analysis shows noteworthy differences in usage between English and German. The English texts make use of epistemic modal markers much more frequently than the German original texts. Markers expressing mere possibility (e.g., maybe) are particularly more frequent in English, while German rather uses markers of high probability (e.g., probably). These differences can be related to divergent communicative preferences, specifically to a preference for indirectness and addressee-orientation in English texts, contrasting with a preference for directness and content-orientedness in German. The German translated texts are situated inbetween English and German originals, i.e., they exhibit some degree of adaptation to German textual conventions as well as some degree of shining-through of the English conventions.