Hedging in the discussion sections of English and Malay educational research articles
Academic writers resort to hedging as one of the interpersonal metadiscourse categories needed to present their findings cautiously in the hope that their research contribution can be accepted by the academic community. Such acceptance, to a great extent, depends on how propositions and claims ar...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2019
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14045/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14045/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/14045/1/27187-96210-3-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Academic writers resort to hedging as one of the interpersonal metadiscourse categories
needed to present their findings cautiously in the hope that their research contribution can be
accepted by the academic community. Such acceptance, to a great extent, depends on how
propositions and claims are presented to the academic community. The purpose of the present
study was to compare and contrast the hedges used in the Discussion sections of educational
research articles in English with those in Malay. To provide additional insights, information
was elicited from both English and Malay specialist informants on their perceptions of
hedging in research article writing. This study contributes to an understanding on the use of
hedges throughout the Discussion sections of the research articles from the two languages
and possible contextual and socio-cultural factors which may have influenced their use. The
corpus of the present study is made up of the Discussion sections of English and Malay
research articles published between 2012 and 2017. The analytical framework of this study is
based on Hyland’s (1996) four hedging functions, which are writer-oriented, attributeoriented,
reliability-oriented, and reader-oriented. Our analysis shows that overall, hedges are
found in more English than Malay discussions. The greater number of hedges in the English
data is in principle expected as English is a remarkably hedging culture. A closer examination
reveals that English writers tend to subtly bring the value of the writer’s contribution to the
fore, tone down the force of the arguments, and bring forth the tentative nature of the
conclusion drawn on the issue examined. The findings provide pedagogical implications in an
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom. |
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