Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations

One of the challenges that Arab EFL male and female postgraduate students in the Malaysian universities have to anticipate is the consultation process with their supervisors regarding their academic projects. During the consultations, the students ask questions and respond to the supervisors’ com...

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Main Authors:	Ahmed, Wasan Khalid, Marlyna Maros
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017
Online Access:	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/1/14237-47849-2-PB.pdf

id	ukm-10660
recordtype	eprints
spelling	ukm-106602017-09-11T02:31:17Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/ Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations Ahmed, Wasan Khalid Marlyna Maros, One of the challenges that Arab EFL male and female postgraduate students in the Malaysian universities have to anticipate is the consultation process with their supervisors regarding their academic projects. During the consultations, the students ask questions and respond to the supervisors’ comments and demands. To perform these academic tasks appropriately, these students need to modify their interactional patterns using various linguistic devices. One of these is hedges, the linguistic politeness markers. Incorrect selection of these devices can be interpreted as inappropriate behaviour, which may affect the student-supervisor relationships. To avoid any breakdown in communication between the two parties and maintain effective consultations, a pragmatic knowledge of using hedges is necessary. Previous discourse analysis studies on the use of hedges have focused on the student-student interaction while student-supervisor academic consultations still need to be explored to understand how these learners perform in more formal academic settings. The current study, therefore, aimed to investigate how Arab EFL postgraduate students use hedges to express various types of politeness. It also aimed to find out whether the use of this device is gender specific. The data were collected by means of four one-to-one student-supervisor consultations and a pragmatic knowledge questionnaire. The findings showed that the students are familiar with hedges as they used a huge number of them. Also the female students used more hedges than male students. However, the analysis of the questionnaire showed that the students were not fully aware of the pragmatic functions achieved by these devices. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017-02 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/1/14237-47849-2-PB.pdf Ahmed, Wasan Khalid and Marlyna Maros, (2017) Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 17 (1). pp. 89-105. ISSN 1675-8021 http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/897
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building	UKM Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English
description	One of the challenges that Arab EFL male and female postgraduate students in the Malaysian universities have to anticipate is the consultation process with their supervisors regarding their academic projects. During the consultations, the students ask questions and respond to the supervisors’ comments and demands. To perform these academic tasks appropriately, these students need to modify their interactional patterns using various linguistic devices. One of these is hedges, the linguistic politeness markers. Incorrect selection of these devices can be interpreted as inappropriate behaviour, which may affect the student-supervisor relationships. To avoid any breakdown in communication between the two parties and maintain effective consultations, a pragmatic knowledge of using hedges is necessary. Previous discourse analysis studies on the use of hedges have focused on the student-student interaction while student-supervisor academic consultations still need to be explored to understand how these learners perform in more formal academic settings. The current study, therefore, aimed to investigate how Arab EFL postgraduate students use hedges to express various types of politeness. It also aimed to find out whether the use of this device is gender specific. The data were collected by means of four one-to-one student-supervisor consultations and a pragmatic knowledge questionnaire. The findings showed that the students are familiar with hedges as they used a huge number of them. Also the female students used more hedges than male students. However, the analysis of the questionnaire showed that the students were not fully aware of the pragmatic functions achieved by these devices.
format	Article
author	Ahmed, Wasan Khalid Marlyna Maros,
spellingShingle	Ahmed, Wasan Khalid Marlyna Maros, Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
author_facet	Ahmed, Wasan Khalid Marlyna Maros,
author_sort	Ahmed, Wasan Khalid
title	Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
title_short	Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
title_full	Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
title_fullStr	Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
title_full_unstemmed	Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations
title_sort	using hedges as relational work by arab efl students in student-supervisor consultations
publisher	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
publishDate	2017
url	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10660/1/14237-47849-2-PB.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T19:58:03Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T19:58:03Z
_version_	1777406662062112768

Using hedges as relational work by Arab EFL students in student-supervisor consultations

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