“A Corpus-Based Pragmatic Analysis of Hedging in Linguistics Master Theses Abstracts Written by Saudi Students

1. 1.      Introduction 

“The past two decades have witnessed an increasing concern for genre-based language studies. Genre is “a complex and contested concept, but usually defined in terms of the purpose that users seek to achieve” (Parkinson, 2017, p. 3). Nunan (1993, p. 120) argued that genre is “a particular type of oral or written communication” He reported that different genres are typified by a particular structure and by grammatical forms that reflect the communicative purpose of the genre in question. The term genre was widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory, and more recently in Linguistics, to refer to “a distinctive type of text” (Allen, 2013, p. 44). Therefore, genres may be illustrated by specific kinds of texts such as abstracts, job applications, tourism brochures, business letters, cartoons, classified announcements, memos, personal letters, news reports, novels, owner’s manuals, research reports, short biographies, university calendars, etc. Each genre has distinctive features. Such features can be linguistic, paralinguistic, contextual, and pragmatic.

One of the most important characteristics of the academic texts genre is the use of hedging. The study of hedging goes back to Lakoff (1975). He investigated how hedging words and phrases (e.g., quite, greatly, rather, so, too, generally speaking) can make things more or less vague. From that time on, hedging has been continued in Speech Acts Theory and oral discourse. Cabanes (2007) defined hedging as a lack of ultimate commitment to what the utterance propositionally conveys. Through hedging, writers attempt to show how their statements are accurate and, simultaneously, they care for saving their faces in case that their judgments undergo any possible falsification. Hyland (2005) stated that hedging words and phrases are modifiers of the writer's accountability for the truth value of what he/she expresses or as descriptors of the importance of the information presented and the attitude of the writer towards such information. The rationale beyond using hedging is to imply the meaning of uncertainty for the text and that the author is not sure about what he discusses in the text. This definition implies that hedging can be utilized as a way of securing the readers' acceptance and motivation. Jalilifar and Shooshtari (2011) maintained that hedging, with its function as a mitigator, is used as a strategy for maintaining status that seeks to make the inappropriate speech act a more appropriate one with the speaker's status in the situation. This means that hedging can be used to make for the unsuitability of the speech act that is used in writing or speaking. In addition, Hyland (1996) argued that hedging words “mitigate the relationship between propositional content and a representation of reality; they hedge the correspondence between what the writer says about the world and what the world is thought to be like” (p. 439). Besides, hedging was regarded as “a way of qualifying categorical commitment and facilitating discussion" (Hyland, 1996, p. 433). It is a device by which the writer can convey his beliefs and subjective viewpoints.

Wishnoff (2002) argued that hedging could be used in various linguistic forms (e.g., the conditional statements, verb choice, modifiers, and personal viewpoint statements). Therefore, hedging is an activity that softens face-threatening as readers are given alternatives to make their own interpretations. This is a sort of politeness towards readers. Therefore, hedging was regarded as a politeness strategy. Myers (1989), in his investigation of the use of politeness in scientific writing, classified hedging as a negative politeness strategies when it marks a claim, or any other statement, as being provisional pending acceptance by the readers.

Hedging is frequently employed in academic writing (Hyland, 2005; Hyland and Tse, 2004). Hedging words and phrases are self-reflective linguistic expressions (e.g., might, suggest, probably) employed to express epistemic modality and modify the illocutionary force of speech acts (Holmes, 1988). They can be used to qualify the writer’s commitment to a proposition (Kopple, 1985), to show uncertainty about the truth of an assertion (Crismore et al., 1993), to ‘‘withhold commitment and open dialogue’’ (Hyland, 2005, p. 49) by acknowledging alternative viewpoints or the subjectivity of one’s own position, and/or ‘‘to mitigate the force of an utterance for the sake of politeness’’ (Holmes, 1990, p. 185). Thus, hedging is a writing technique that the writer can exploit to express uncertainty or certainty about an argument, conceal or reinforce commitment to a position, entertain or dismiss alternatives, open or close dialogue with the reader (Millan, 2008). The skillful manipulation of hedging in academic texts signals a writer’s epistemic stance towards propositional content and intended readers, and marks him/herself as a competent member of the discourse community (Hyland, 2005).

Different reasons have been identified by different researchers for the use of hedging. Writers use hedging to tone down their utterances and minimize the risk of opposition. That is, they avoid scientific imprecision and personal accountability for what is presented (Varttala, 2001). In addition, writers need to inform readers that what they claim is clear-cut and the final word on the topic. Incomplete certainty does not inevitably mean that there is a vagueness or confusion. Hedging can be considered as techniques for reporting results more precisely. They reflect the real understanding of the writer and can call for a negotiation over the state of knowledge under investigation. The lack of a strong evidence and accredited data may make academic writers prone to use hedging as they may not be able to account for stronger claims (Skelton, 1988). Furthermore, hedging can be used as a positive or negative politeness strategy through which the writer tries to be modest rather than assuming he/she has the powerful knowledge. Consequently, it is capable of establishing a good relationship between readers and writers and secures a certain level of acceptability. Furthermore, the importance of hedging has been reported by a considerable number of studies. For example, Varttala (2001) claimed that hedging is utilized to report results, account for results, make inferences out of evidences, convince readers, and set up interpersonal ties between readers and writers. 

Swales and Feak (2004) introduced three types of hedging: (1) content-oriented hedging, which mitigates the connection between the suppositional content and the manner of representing reality and hedges the correspondence between what the writer claims about the world and what the world is perceived to be like; (2) writer-oriented hedging, which protects the writer from the consequences of his personal commitment (e.g., the passive voice); and (3) reader-oriented hedging, which is concerned with the relationship between the reader and the writer. Writers pay attention to the interactional impacts of their statements and treat the reader as a colleague who is able take part in the discourse with an open mind (Kelly and Bazerman, 2003).

1. Review of literature

A growing body of research has investigated the use of hedging by members of different language, cultural, or disciplinary communities (Martín, 2008; Martín and Burgess, 2004; Salager-Meyer et al., 2003). Another stream of studies (e.g., Hyland, 2005; Millan, 2008; Vold, 2006) examined the use of hedging across disciplines and found clear disciplinary differences in the use of hedging. Through hedging, writers in academic contexts show whether they are certain or doubtful about their statements and to what extent they are confident of their claim (Vázquez and Giner, 2008). In addition, through hedging, readers are given some space to judge the truth value of the assertion.

In scientific writing, hedging was investigated by Hyland (2003). He examined around 27 articles on molecular biology published between 1990 and 1995. He concluded that modality is a significant way of expressing hedging. In addition, Hyland (2004) analyzed the metadiscourse features in seven biology articles. He concluded that scientists use hedging for addressing the intended reader and conveying their personal attitudes towards what they claim. Moreover, Cabanes (2007) compared hedging in English and Spanish architecture project descriptions. He concluded that hedging is used to serve three functions: (1) it expresses politeness towards the audience, (2) it protects the writer from claims that may be wrong, and (3) it implies the degree the precision that the writer considers in his text. Besides, Vázquez and Giner (2008) studied hedging in three types of research articles: marketing, biology, and mechanical engineering. They concluded that hedging is used differently in these three areas.  In addition, Tabrizi (2011) compared hedging in biology and English language teaching texts. She presented the results of a review of 60 research articles, discussing the importance, frequency, and realization of hedging in both scientific and humanistic articles. She concluded that hedging is most frequently used in English language teaching texts than biology texts.

Further studies attempted to capture a wider view of how hedging is used in the genre of social texts. Hyland (2005) explored the use of boosters and hedging in 240 published research articles from eight disciplines and insider informant interviews. He concluded that boosters are used more than hedging and that mass communication writers are more confident about their claims than biology writers. In addition, Martín (2008) compared the frequency of hedging in clinical and health psychology in English and Spanish research articles. He concluded that that English research articles involved more protection to the writer's face than the Spanish research articles. It is also worth noting here that Salager-Meyer (2011) argued that social texts are commonly associated with using hedged devices such as the passive voice and probabilities.

In academic writing, based on interviews with insider informants, and an analysis of two and a half million word corpus of published articles, textbooks, second language students essays, Hyland (2002) investigated the use of directives and hedging. He concluded that directives are used for different purposes across different branches of knowledge. Besides, in a study conducted by Hyland (2005), he concluded that EFL writers tend to use stronger modals as a way of showing commitment. In addition, Mojica (2005) investigated Filipino writers' ways of showing commitment in their English academic papers. He concluded that modals and probabilities are preferred forms of hedging. Moreover, Akbas (2012) investigated metadiscourse by manipulating WordSmith Tools (5.0) to quantitatively analysis twenty-five thousand one hundred and fifty-five word corpus of ninety randomly selected master’s dissertation abstracts in the social sciences written by native speakers of Turkish, Turkish speakers of English and native speakers of English. His findings indicated that non-native speakers of English used a mixture of their cultural tendencies and adapt themselves to the target language conventions. Native speakers of English preferred the use of hedging more in their style of writing in their abstracts, whereas Turkish writers tend to use more boosters to show their claims with more confidence.

Based on the previous discussion, it is clear that the significance of hedging becomes more evident as far as academic writing is concerned. Hedging denotes interpretations and allows writers to express their attitudes to the actuality of the statements they accompany, thereby giving unproven claims cautious and indecisive assertions. The use of hedging was studied in the context of scientific texts (e.g., biology, engineering, and architecture) and social texts (e.g., psychology and mass communication). Moreover, hedging was investigated through comparative studies such as scientific and humanistic texts and scientific and English language teaching texts.

1. Significance of the study

Regardless of the growing body of research on hedging, little research has focused on the genre of the English article abstract written by Arab speakers of English, especially Saudi students. A less-focused research effort was made on investigating hedging used by Saudi students. Therefore, this study is aimed at examining the types and frequency of hedging in the abstracts of the Linguistics Master theses written by Saudi students enrolled in the English Language and Literature department at the College of Languages and Translation, Al Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Specifically, it seeks to answer the question of what are the hedging words used in Linguistics Master Theses Abstracts written by Saudi students? In addition, it is geared towards investigating the frequency of hedging words in these theses. Accordingly, the study would contribute to the existing literature of hedging, provide further insights into the communication style and patterns of Saudi writers, and lay a foundation for further studies on Saudi writers’ pragmatic competence and hedging production and development.

1. Methodology

4.1. Corpus

To address the study’s research question, a corpus of 100 randomly selected Linguistics Master Theses Abstracts, written between 2012 and 2016, by Saudi students, was carefully examined quantitatively using the online LEXICOOL text analyzer, which can be found on https://www.lexicool.com/text_analyzer. The corpus comprised 27,411 words in total. This corpus will be made freely available for research purposes. Despite presenting numerical trends, this study is predominantly qualitative in nature. A thorough descriptive analysis in addition to simple calculus processes were applied to the study corpus. In analyzing the study corpus, the following classification of hedge markers by Hyland (2000) was taken into account in the analysis of the corpus.