Comparative Study of Hedges Utilization by Iranian and Native American Researchers in Applied Linguistics

Subject Areas : Research in English Language Pedagogy

Sharareh Sadat Sarsarabi ¹ , Samaneh Zolfaghari ²

1 - Department of English, Farhangian University, Shahid Beheshti Campus, Mashhad, Iran
2 - Department of English, Farhangian University, Shahid Beheshti Campus, Mashhad, Iran

Received: 2021-06-04 Accepted : 2021-07-03 Published : 2021-12-01

Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Hedging devices, Result, Native and Non-native, discussion,

Abstract :

Academic writing, similar to the other types of writing, would be operative if authors employconventions which the other associates of their community recognize familiar and conclusive. Principally, writing includes generating a text that we accept the reader will understand and believe, and reading includes drawing on conventions according to what the author is demanding to do. It is widely believed that, one of the most important aspect of scientific discourse is to consider data and the results obtained from the gathered data. The sentences of a written discourses signify the writers’ opinions (Stubbs,1986), academic authors are required to offer their statements thoughtfully, and specifically to satisfy expectations of discourse community, and to start a dialogue with their readers. The purpose of the present study was to examine the frequency and types of hedging devices in Discussion and Result sections of applied linguistics articles. To this end, 20 articles were selected form the leading journal; 10 by native English speaker EFL scholars and 10 by Iranian EFL scholars. After categorizing hedging devices based on Salager-Meyer’s (1994) taxonomy, and recording the type and frequency of hedges, it was found that there was no significant difference between Iranian and American writers in terms of utilizing hedging devices in their discussion and result sections.

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