Text Linguistics

WRITING WITHOUT CONVICTION? HEDGING IN SCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLES

Hedging is the expression of tentativeness and possibility and it is central to academic writing where the need to present unproven prepositions with caution and precision is essential.

It is a significant communicative resource for academics. Hedges are treated as a form of metadiscourse and as a means of achieving distance between a speaker and what is said.

They confirm the individual professional persona and represent a critical element in the rhetorical means of gaining acceptance of claims. They allow writers to anticipate possible opposition to claims by expressing statements with precision and caution. They have a clear pragmatic importance as a discoursal resource for expressing uncertainty, scepticism, and open-mindedness about one’s prepositions. In science, hedges play a critical role in gaining ratification for claims from a powerful peer group by allowing writers to present statements with appropriate accuracy, caution and humility.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF SCIENTIFIC STATEMENTS

Knowledge is influenced by the basic elements of the communication process: writer, audience, language and reality. This is because transforming claims into knowledge requires reader acceptance and therefore linguistic and rhetorical means of persuasion.

In introducing claims, writers rely on evidential support from statements previously confirmed by discourse community as truth about the world. Every other statement, by which the writer asserts the content to be true as far as he or she knows, is a hedged or non-factive statement. Where there is uncertainty about the evidential status of the assumptions between data and hypotheses, claims require varying degrees of hedging.

HEDGING IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ARTICLES

A research paper extends understandings of phenomena that seem to be worthy of study and also helps support or establish the personal reputation of the writer; a writer wants the message to be understood (an illocutionary effect) and to be accepted (a hoped for perlocutionary effect).

There is always at least one plausible interpretation of a data. Readers may therefore be persuaded to judge a claim acceptable or may decide to reject it. This view distinguishes comprehension from interpretation: while lexical and syntactic forms determine text meanings, interpretation is unconstrained and subject to knowledge effects which depend on higher-level reasoning skills. The scientific writer can only guide the reader to a particular interpretation though the use of formal meanings but external factors (prior knowledge) affect interpretation. All statements require ratification and because readers are guarantors of the negatability of claims, this gives them an active and constitutive role in how writers construct them.

Mitigation is central to academic writing as hedging signals the writer’s anticipation of the opposition to a preposition.

Two types of opposition: - content oriented-> claims have to correspond with what is believed to be true in the world. Hedges concern a statement’s adequacy conditions: the relationship between a proposition and a representation of reality. There are two reasons for modifying a proposition so that it corresponds with reality: -is an obligation to present claims as accurately as possible (it refers to accuracy-oriented); - the need to anticipate what may be harmful to the reader (it refers to writer-oriented). Accuracy-oriented hedges can be further distinguished according to whether they involve a qualification of predicate intensity (attribute hedges) or writer confidence (reliability hedges). The first reflects the difficulties of using a limited language to describe the variability of natural phenomena, while the second indicates writers’ confidence in the certainty of their knowledge.

- reader-oriented-> a proposition which could be presented categorically from an objective perspective may be explicitly hedged because of reader consideration. Thus, reader-oriented hedges incorporate an awareness of interpersonal factors, meeting acceptability conditions.

In sum, hedges anticipate a need to justify claims because the writer is dependent on their ratification by the reader. The writer must make a hypothesis both about the nature of reality and about the acceptability of the hypothesis to an audience.

A FUZZY CATEGORY MODEL

Hedging devices are polypragmatic, that is they can convey a range of different meanings, often at the same time. So that the precise motivation for employing a hedge may not always be clear.

Four variables are important in determining core cases:

1. Specification

2. Verification

3. Agentivity

4. Cooperation

Each variable is related to hedging by assumptions it allows the reader to make about writer’s attitude to the proposition or its content.

1. A high degree of specification of propositional elements is associated with content-oriented strategies and particularly with attribute hedges. These determine how far the terms used accurately describe the events or states referred to in the proposition

2. Verification refers to the acknowledgement of uncertainties about the truth of a claim. It indicates the confidence that can be invested in a statement and is associated with reliability type accuracy hedges.

3. Agentivity, whether the action or state described in proposition is explicitly associated with the writer, is critical in distinguishing reader- and content-oriented hedges.

4. Co-operative features, such as incitation, offering alternatives and reference to shared assumptions, indicate the extent to which the writer seek to involve the reader in the ratification of the claim.

CONTENT-ORIENTED HEDGES

They 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. The motivations for these hedges fall into two overlapping categories, concerning the writer’s focus on propositional accuracy or on self-protection from the consequences of poor judgement.

- ACCURACY-OREINTED HEDGES-> these involve the writer desire to express propositions with greater precision in areas often subject to revision. Hedging here is an important means of accurately stating uncertain scientific claims with appropriate caution.

Their main function is to imply that the proposition in based on plausible reasoning in the absence of certain knowledge, they ask that a proposition be understood as true as far as can be determined. They enable the reader to distinguish between what is actual and what is only inferential.

• Attribute hedges-> are used to seek precision in expression. They enable writers to restructure categories, define entities and conceptualize processes more exactly to distinguish how far results approximate to an idealized state, specifying more precisely the attributes of the phenomena described. They indicate a discrepancy between actual results and either an expected state or the concept routinely available to explain it, allowing a better match with familiar descriptive terms.

• Reliability hedges-> they indicate the writer’s confidence in the truth of a preposition. They acknowledge subjective uncertainties and are motivated by the writer’s desire to explicitly convey an assessment of the reliability of propositional validity. All reliability hedges express a conviction about the truth of a statement as warranted by available facts, relying on inference, deduction, or repeated experience. They essentially make claims contingent due to knowledge limitations, and this is occasionally made explicit. In summary, they contribute precision and work to specify a state of knowledge rather than hedge the writer’s commitment.

- WRITER-ORIENTED HEDGES-> these limit the writer’s commitment to statements. They enable writers to refer to speculative possibilities while at the same time guard against possible criticism. They aim to shield the writer from the consequences of opposition by limiting personal commitment, diminish the author’s presence in the text rather than increase the precision of claims, help minimize the scientists personal involvement and thereby reduce the possibility of refutation. The author’s responsibility can be reduced with the use of passive constructions and causal subjects.

READER-ORIENTED HEDGES

Securing ratification of scientific claims also involves reducing the risk of negation on subjective grounds. Core examples of reader-oriented hedges confirm the attention writers give to the interactional effects of their statements. Essentially, in presenting claims, a writer also projects a persona which carries information concerning the writer’s professional attitudes to the discipline.

Forms of reader-oriented hedges: first person pronouns. Reference to the writer explicitly marks a statement as an alternative view rather than a definite truth. The hedge signals a personal opinion allowing the reader to choose the more persuasive explanation.

There are three main function of hedging:

1. To present claims with greater precision with respect to both the terms used to describe real-world phenomena and the degree of reliability the writer invests in the statement.

2. To signal reservations in the truth of a claim to limit the professional damage which might result from bald propositions

3. To give deference and recognition to the reader and

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